Off Balance
by JustineR
Summary: In this modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is a high-powered, idealistic lawyer, Will Darcy is CEO of a private equity firm, and they grapple with work, love, and family. M for bad language and gauzy sexual metaphors.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's note: Here's the first chapter of a 16-chapter modern Pride and Prejudice retelling. The M rating is for bad language and mild sexual content. Complete.  
_

_My warmest, gushiest thanks to Jan and Barbara, who have been thoughtful, patient, incisive, take-no-prisoners betas for this entire story. You two are wonderful. Thank you again and again._

_Blurb: Elizabeth Bennet is a high-powered, idealistic lawyer, Will Darcy is CEO of a private equity firm, and they grapple with work, love, and family._

**Off Balance**

**Chapter 1**

April 2006

Lizzy had finally yielded to her sister Jane's pleasant, cheerful, smilingly relentless requests that she go with her to a Friday spring singles event for members of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lizzy was reluctant because, as always, she had work to do. She was a junior associate in a giant law firm, DeWitt, Howe & Dewey, and like all the associates she worked between 80 and 100 hours a week. She was damned if she wanted to spend any of her valuable free time with a bunch of New York singles who smelled of desperation, especially since she didn't have time to date anybody anyway.

Still, because Jane had asked so sweetly, she left the office early, at 8:30. In a spring windstorm, she hauled herself and her heavy briefcase, jammed with the papers she should have been working on, Uptown to the museum. As she was checking her coat and bag and simultaneously trying to get her suit skirt turned back around the right way, she overheard two men behind her talking.

"Charlie, I've had to go to cocktail parties and business dinners with investors every night this week. I just want to go home." She could certainly relate to that. Unfortunately, they kept talking.

"This is different!" his friend exclaimed jovially. "Look at all the beautiful women here. And, they all love art!"

"Oh, please. They're just trying to broadcast how highbrow they are by coming to an event at a museum."

Lizzy got her coat check ticket and faced them as she turned around to go. They were just two more guys in suits in a place packed to the gills with guys in suits, but it was still obvious which was which. Mr. Cheerful was the wiry, sandy-haired guy in his early 30s with freckles on his perky nose and a happy grin. Mr. Grumpus was the tall, lanky fellow with dark hair and eyes and a sour expression. He probably would have been attractive if he hadn't looked so pissed off.

Fabulous, thought Lizzy. An entire museum full of hound dogs and jackasses. A whole damn menagerie. Then she saw Jane waving at her, and of course her crabbiness melted away, because how could it be otherwise in the face of all that sweetness, light, and beauty? She pushed her way through the crowd over to Jane, who greeted her with hugs and kisses and inquiries about whether she was getting enough to eat, because she looked too thin.

A few minutes later, Jane and Charlie simultaneously reached for the same cheese puff on the passing waiter's hors d'oeuvre tray. Their hands touched, their eyes met, and Lizzy saw that, right there in the bright vault-ceilinged room full of sweating singles and 18th-century oil paintings of rich guys and their hunting dogs, lightning had struck. They introduced themselves, and then managed to tear themselves away from gazing into the deep, deep pools of each other's eyes long enough to introduce the other two, albeit hastily.

"Oh, this is my sister Lizzy..."

"Hi, Elizabeth Bennet," Lizzy said, holding out her hand to Charlie and giving him a firm handshake.

"This is my old friend, Will Darcy," Charlie said, inclining his head toward the taller man before turning back to Jane. Will nodded his head, but didn't extend his hand, so Lizzy kept her handshake to herself this time.

Charlie was in advertising. Jane was finishing her PhD in Child Development. They bonded over the intricacies of human psychology. The four of them stood around for an hour or so, Jane and Charlie chattering away, Lizzy and Will both looking around, bored, at the unadventurous paintings.

Later, Lizzy was returning to the little group with fresh glasses of white wine for herself and Jane, who had stepped away to say hello to a college friend, when Lizzy overheard Will and Charlie as she walked up to them from behind.

"I asked her to get dessert at La Framboise after this thing is over," Charlie said. "Why don't you come? Her sister is coming, too."

"No, I don't think so," Will replied shortly. "I don't want to be a third wheel."

"You wouldn't be! Like I said, Lizzy is coming. She's not your usual type, but she's cute. C'mon, loosen up, have a good time!"

"There's a reason why I stick to my quote unquote usual physical type, Charlie. I can't help it-I just don't find short, rotund brunettes attractive. We all like what we like, right?, and there's not much we can do about it."

"Not my physical type-Jackass," thought Lizzy, who was in fact of average height with an athletic build. She stomped up next to Charlie, wineglasses sloshing. "Seen Jane? I've gotta go."

"Aren't you going to join us at La Framboise?" asked Charlie, smiling. "They have a great chocolate decadence cake."

"Oh, no thanks. I have to watch what I eat, or I'll instantly inflate into a giant beach ball with my tiny little arms and legs sticking out." She puffed up her cheeks and poked out her arms, wiggling them. "You know, like Violet Beauregarde. So, thanks again, but I have to take off. Work to do."

Will looked slightly worried, maybe wondering if she'd overheard him, and Charlie tried to convince her to stay. But Lizzy found Jane, gave her both glasses of wine, and headed for the coat check. Ten minutes later Will headed out, too, and the lovebirds took flight to La Framboise for a dessert that lasted three hours and rocked their worlds.

* * *

Two days later, Lizzy met her friend Charlotte for their almost-weekly Sunday brunch, this time at a Mediterranean-ish greasy-spoon diner that Charlotte liked. It reminded her of the Greek diners in their Upstate New York hometown, Artemis.(1)

Charlotte and Lizzy were old friends-they'd helped each other survive four years of honors and AP classes at Artemis High School. Charlotte's family owned Lucas Safe & Lock Company, one of those old Upstate manufacturing concerns going back to the Industrial Revolution, and a major employer in town. Her father was a bigwig in the Chamber of Commerce and a player in town politics, such as they were. Town-gown relations were not good, and Mr. Lucas was always leading the charge to try to force Artemis College to control its students' partying, to pay more to the town for false fire alarms, and so on. This created a little tension between Lizzy and Charlotte, since Lizzy's father, Tom, was a professor at the college. They had long ago figured out that it was better not to talk about these things.

Lizzy and Charlotte had stayed friends through college, even after Charlotte had gone off to Wellesley and Lizzy had headed off to Columbia. After graduation, Charlotte had moved to New York, refusing her father's offer of a job back at Safe & Lock. She had hoped for something better, more exciting, in NYC. But one thing had led to another, and now she was using her B.A. in Anthropology to do PR for a non-profit international development organization, AmericaCaring. She and Lizzy talked a lot about work and big ideas. But they also often talked about Charlotte's love life, which was a lot healthier than Lizzy's since Charlotte only worked about 50 hours a week.

Lizzy attacked her hash browns as she told Charlotte about singles night at the Met. "Can you believe that asshole? Who the hell does he think he is? What kind of person says something like that?"

"Wait, what did you say his name was, again?"

"Will. Will... Darcy, I think."

Charlotte's jaw practically hit the floor. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, why? You've heard of him?"

"Well, I guess if you had been around New York a few years ago, you would have, too. I think you were in San Francisco at the time, or maybe Washington...You know he's related to the Fitzwilliams, on his mother's side? As in, a big chunk of the New York congressional delegation, and the presidential candidate?" Lizzy shook her head no, she hadn't known he was related. But of course she knew, vaguely, about the family, because everyone in New York did. They were kind of like the Kennedys, New York edition, but without the Greek tragedy.

Charlotte went on. "Well, there was this big scandal involving his sister, who's a real party girl, and his girlfriend, and drugs, maybe something about his cousins?...I don't really remember the details, but his girlfriend and her drug dealer were all over the tabloids. Maybe something about an OD at his apartment? His sister ended up in rehab for the millionth time, I think...and he kind of dropped off the face of the earth after that. For a while there were sightings of him in Central Park jogging and that kind of thing, but not anymore." Obviously Charlotte had been secretly reading the _New York Post_, Lizzy thought. The _Post _gave vultures a bad name.

"Oh, nasty. I guess he prefers the heroin chic look, then," she said. "No wonder." He sounded like a real playboy.

"And I guess that answers your question about what kind of person says something like that," Charlotte sniffed, "especially since he obviously doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. Look at you! You look great."

Lizzy shrugged. "Eh...but thanks."

Charlotte turned and beckoned to the waitress, who was walking by. "Excuse me, could I please get some gravy for my fries?" The waitress, a stocky Russian woman in her fifties wearing a scratchy-looking orange-and-white-striped uniform, nodded hostilely and stalked off.

"God, Charlotte, I can't believe you still eat gravy on your fries. That's so...Upstate."

Charlotte laughed. "You should talk. Just a minute ago you said something about how the eggs cost 'five _dallars'_."

Lizzy reached across the table and swatted her lightly on the arm, laughing back at her. "Shut up! I did not!"

"You can take the girl out of the Northern Tier, but you can't take-"

"The Northern Tier out of the girl. I know. Anyway, tell me about this latest guy so I can enjoy your love life vicariously."

"OK, so his name is David, and I met him at a film festival in the Village."

* * *

Jane and Charlie immediately started seeing each other daily, and swapped keys within two weeks. Jane told Lizzy, during one of their frequent five-minute late-night conversations, that they both just knew this was the real thing. He was romantic, and caring, and respectful of her studies. Also, he was adorable, and sweet, and...and...and.

Lizzy had her doubts about how serious Charlie really was. He didn't strike her as being a player, exactly, but still... And Jane had a habit of going out with guys who were wowed by her looks and then dumped her shortly after they found out how smart and serious she was about her research under that beautiful exterior.

But Jane really seemed to think that Charlie was The One, the soul mate she'd been looking for all these years. In spite of the fact that her psychology training had taught her to know better, Jane really believed in soul mates, and she wanted Lizzy to find hers, too. Lizzy wasn't so sure there was such a thing. After she'd seen Jane and Charlie together a few times, though, she was starting to believe it might be true for them, at least.

One night in early May, Jane called Lizzy. It was just past 11:30 and Lizzy was at the office, as usual, trying to get ready for court the next morning.

"Hi Jane. What's up?"

"Do you have a minute?"

"Literally just a minute, maybe two. Big deadline tomorrow."

"OK, I'll talk fast. Charlie and I want you to have dinner with us, and with his friend Will. You two are our closest friends and we want you to meet under better circumstances."

Lizzy looked up at the ceiling and sighed. "Jane, I love you, but do not even think about trying to set me up with that jackass."

"Lizzy, he's a very nice man. I think you might have a lot in common."

"I am not a nice person. I'm a lawyer. See? Opposites."

"Now stop that. You might as well agree right now, because you know I'll wear you down in the end."

Lizzy sighed again and opened up her calendar. "Yes, OK, I bow before the awesome power of your loving kindness. I could do...two weeks from Wednesday, or next Saturday. That's my best offer. And I might have to cancel if something comes up at work."

"OK. I'll text you the date. Love you."

"Love you, too, Janey."

* * *

And thus the following Saturday night the four found themselves together again at Le Coq Violet, a swanky French restaurant near Chinatown. It was just Jane's style, country French decor with lilacs and roosters all over the place. Jane and Charlie sat close together, his arm over the back of her chair. Lizzy and Will sat on the other side of the table, busy not looking at each other.

Lizzy was avoiding looking at him because he had arrived very late, and then, within the space of ten minutes, 1. asked that they be moved to a different table because the first one was too close to the kitchen, 2. sent back his water glass because he said it looked dirty, and 3. asked her to switch seats with him because he needed better light to read his BlackBerry since its backlit screen was malfunctioning. Will was not looking at Lizzy because, of course, he was doing something on said BlackBerry. Lizzy thought he might possibly be the most entitled jerk she'd ever met, and she'd met quite a few.

"So, Liz, how are things at DeWitt?" asked Charlie as they handed their menus to the waiter.

"Oh, the usual. Still giving them my 100 hours a week. I'm working on paying off my college and law school loans, and then after I save up a nest egg, I'm out of there."

This was enough to tear Will away from his BlackBerry for a minute. He looked up from his lap and asked, "You're an associate at DeWitt?" Apparently he _could _take the time to speak to people if they interested him enough.

"Um, yeah. What did you think I was?"

He looked slightly flustered, but kept it together. "I guess I assumed you were a paralegal."

"And why is that, exactly?" she said, sweet as pie, while she turned a little to look at him. So, not only was she unattractive, apparently, but she was also a secretary, below his notice. Please. A paralegal would not have been wearing the expensive suit she'd had on at the museum that evening. What was this all about?

But Charlie laughed it off. "I told you this, Will. She was on law review at Yale."

"And she clerked at the Supreme Court!" Jane chimed in, smiling proudly.

"You're a shoo-in for partner at DeWitt, aren't you, Liz?" asked Charlie.

Lizzy waved off the compliment. "No, nobody is a shoo-in. Only two women have made partner in litigation during the last ten years-that place is a freaking sausage fest. I _have _been in on some of the firm's more important cases, though."

"Don't be so modest, Liz."

"What's your specialty?" Will asked, leaning forward and putting his hand, holding the BlackBerry, on the table. She noticed he had a manicure. What the hell was with rich guys and their manicures, anyway? Did they get pedicures, too?

"Intellectual property. Copyright stuff." Lizzy expected that to be a conversation-killer as usual, but surprisingly it wasn't.

"Oh, very interesting. International or U.S.?" Will asked.

"Primarily U.S. Unfortunately, at DeWitt that means defending big firms that have stolen technology from each other. Or, they are trying to take materials that used to be freely available on the Internet and walling them off under a more restrictive interpretation of copyright law. Basically it's helping the big guys get even more powerful."

"And that's why you want to get out?" asked Charlie.

"Yeah. And, Jane, I didn't get to tell you this yet, but I hear that there may be a position opening up at the NCPP in D.C.! If it does, I might apply, and see if I can get back on the right side of things."

"What's the NCPP?" Charlie inquired.

"Oh, the National Capital Punishment Project. It's a death penalty defense firm. They specialize in cases where poor or minority defendants didn't get a fair trial. That kind of thing."

Will, clearly flabbergasted, asked, "You're likely to make partner at DeWitt and you're going to quit to go work for those guys? Do you realize the pay cut you'd take?"

"Money isn't everything. I'd rather be able to look at myself in the mirror without feeling nauseated. You know, go fight against the death penalty instead of working for the fat cats."

Charlie laughed. "Look out there, Liz. You might say Darcy is one of the fat cats."

"Oh?"

Will looked uncomfortable. "Well...I'm CEO of WPD Capital."

"Oh, I see," she said, raising an eyebrow and giving him a speculative glance. Maybe he wasn't just a playboy after all. "So...what's WPD Capital's focus these days?"

In fact, she read the business pages, she knew perfectly well what private equity firms like WPD Capital did in general terms, and she didn't like them. They were sharks, circling around businesses that looked like they weren't doing well, buying them up on credit and loading them down with debt, tearing them apart in the name of cutting costs so that any earnings could be used to pay back the loans, and selling them quickly for enormous profits while laying off a huge percentage of their employees. It was like flipping a house, a kind of speculation, really, only when someone flipped a house it didn't throw thousands of people out of work.

Dismissively, Will said, "Same as always. We develop businesses across all sectors, help them become more professional and profitable quickly."

That was sure putting a positive spin on it. Lizzy decided to let it go, for Jane's sake. So she nodded and said in a friendly tone, "Ah. Great. So, Jane, what's going on in the Cognition Lab?"

"Oh! Well, you know I just finished my dissertation, so I'm not working on my own experiments right now, just helping out my professor till I head to NYU for my post-doc. But anyway, this week she started a new experiment about infant perceptions of object permanence. That means we're looking at how babies react when an object is covered up in some way, and whether they think it will still be there when the covering is removed. It's really interesting..."

Charlie listened in rapt attention, Lizzy asked questions, and Will went back to his BlackBerry. He hardly spoke for the rest of the evening.

* * *

_Footnotes_:  
(1) Artemis is a made-up place, but many towns in the dairy heartland of rural Upstate New York are similarly named after figures and places in Ancient Greece and Rome. People disagree about why, but some think the namers were trying to recapture the glory of the ancient republics. This legacy lives on in well-known places named Ithaca, Syracuse, Rome, and Troy, but also in little towns like Vestal, Romulus, Cicero, Sparta, Ovid, and Homer. It also lives on in the Greek Revival architecture style of the area, in which ordinary colonial-style clapboard houses inexplicably have massive Classical entryways slapped onto their fronts, with columns and porticos and so on.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thanks very much to those of you who have left me comments. I'm glad you're enjoying the story so far. My plan is to post on Wednesdays and Saturdays. My undying gratitude to Jan and Barbara, my wonderful betas, for their help with this chapter. _ **  
**

**Chapter 2**

From the time Lizzy was a young girl, the adults in her life impressed upon her the importance of hard work.

While her father was pushing her to read his favorite Thomas Hardy novel when she was ten, he said to her, "Lizzy, you're a smart girl. If you work really hard, you'll be rewarded. The world is basically a meritocracy, but being intelligent isn't enough to succeed." She had to look up some of those words, but she got the point in the end.

While her mother Lillian was teaching her, against her will, to vacuum, and to clean a toilet, and even to cook a little, she said, "Lizzy, every responsible adult needs to know how to keep house and take care of him or herself. It's hard work, but it's an important part of being a grownup. Never mind that your father never does any housework. Things will be different for your generation."

When her Aunt Maddie visited with Uncle Ed from Boston, she said, "Lizzy, your body is changing, and you're turning into a woman now. Let me share some advice that my mother gave me at your age: the most important thing a woman can do is to work hard to achieve financial security. That way, no matter what happens, she will always be OK."

Lizzy took all of this to heart. In junior high and then in high school, she threw herself into her schoolwork, and she was rewarded with top grades and academic awards. She didn't try nearly so hard at the housework side of things, but she did grasp her mother's point that adults didn't depend on other people to do the distasteful things in life, and that everyone in the household needed to pitch in to keep the place running. She never shirked and always did her chores, mostly without complaining.

She got a summer job every year in high school, working as many hours as she could. She worked in an ice cream parlor, she did babysitting, she waitressed, and she worked at the college making cold calls for the development office. She used some of the money to buy a better bike for getting to work without having to rely on her mother for a ride, she gave some to the Humane Society, and she saved some for the future.

And she found that she really liked just about everything about hard work. Sure, it made her tired, but she felt proud of doing a job well, and she liked feeling industrious and productive. She liked earning money, not just for the sake of having money, but because it gave her the freedom to do the things she wanted to do without having to depend on anyone else. She also liked that working hard got her out of the house, away from her parents and their passive-aggressive relationship. She liked the camaraderie that she had with her co-workers, a community all of her own. And she really, really liked the possibility that, if she had the right job, she could do all of this while also helping other people and making the world a better place.

She started thinking about this a lot when she was a high school junior, getting ready to apply to college. What did she want to do when she grew up? What did she want to be? How could one person make a difference? She wrote about that in her college application essays.

To her delight, her hard work in high school paid off. She got into Columbia University, which had the rigorous intellectual environment she wanted. Plus, it had the added bonus of being close enough to Artemis that she _could _go home for the weekend if she wanted, but not so close that she'd _have _to go home every weekend. Unfortunately, Columbia took one look at her family's finances and decided she didn't qualify for any financial aid except for a work-study job. Her father explained to her that this was just the current dilemma of the middle class in America. The question then became: should she go to Artemis College, where she'd also been admitted and could get a free ride because her father worked there? Or, should she go to Columbia, where she would have to pay for her education by taking out big loans? Artemis was an unremarkable liberal arts college, while Columbia could really open some doors for her. She debated this with her parents for a long time, and, more importantly, talked it over at length with Aunt Maddie and Uncle Ed, who had more recent experience with these issues. In the end, she accepted the offer from Columbia. She signed the loan forms, and off she went.

She threw herself into the academic challenge and loved the freedom that came from being on her own. She loved being part of the city, with its vibrant mix of people of all different colors, shapes, and sizes, different beliefs, languages, and modes of expression. She always took an overload of classes, and found that being super busy helped her stay focused, cheerful, and happy. She excelled as never before. She also worked at least 10 hours a week at a work-study job-in foodservice, as a department assistant, whatever she could get-and never had to ask her parents for spending money. She was very proud of that.

Her first semester, a friend in the dorm invited her to spend a Saturday doing volunteer work at a women's shelter, and she liked it so much that she began to volunteer there weekly. She started to see that, even though things were going well for her, the world wasn't always fair, and it wasn't always a meritocracy, and smarts and hard work didn't always help you get ahead. Sometimes people made bad choices, yes, but sometimes they suffered because of choices that other people had made without consulting them. And sometimes there were forces at work that were just out of people's control, with devastating effects. She started to understand at a deeper level what her Aunt Maddie had told her about women needing financial independence so they could be OK, no matter what happened. Earlier, she hadn't quite gotten what the "no matter what" might actually mean, but at the women's shelter, she got an eyeful of it. What could she do to help these women, and other people like them?

She started to think about this question systematically. In search of answers, she took classes in history, politics, and philosophy. This broadened her view even more, and she started to think a lot about concepts of equality, fair play, and social justice. So, in addition to working a few hours a week at the women's shelter, she also started to volunteer with a group that taught English literacy to immigrants.

In her junior year she was accepted into Oxford's prestigious year-long program called Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She loved the intense intellectual life there. She couldn't get a job in England, though, because she didn't have a work visa, so she spent even more time than usual hitting the books, going to seminars, and debating with her classmates over a beer in the pub. During holidays she backpacked around Europe using the money she'd saved up over the years, eagerly observing the massive changes taking place there after the fall of Communism. For the first time, she could see how small her young life back in Artemis had been.

Putting it all together, she came to the conclusion that the best way for her to make a real difference was a career in law. She might be able to help people, like the women in the shelter, solve immediate, concrete problems. But maybe, if she played her cards right, she could also find a way to fight bigger fights, change the rules, and put the ideas about equality, fair play, and social justice that she'd been studying into action. She was full of optimism, an energetic doer, and the law looked like the best way to do achieve her goals.

It wasn't all hard work and deep thoughts, though. In high school, her brainiac ways and big, positive energy had intimidated the boys and scared them away. In college, for the first time there were young men who were drawn to her particular combination of brains, wit, and beauty. Most students were deep into the hook-up culture, never even dating exactly, but she wasn't interested in that. She wanted something more.

She had her first real love affair at Oxford with a young, bright Frenchman named Laurent. They frequently stayed up until 4:00 in the morning drinking red wine and arguing passionately about philosophy and the meaning of life. She didn't tell him she was a virgin, he didn't ask, and they fumbled their way pleasurably through her first time with the verve of two young people who rejected each other's basic epistemological and ontological stances. All in all, he was a pretty good first boyfriend, setting the bar high for the future men in her life. He showed her it was OK to expect respect, equality, and mutual satisfaction in a relationship, unlike what she'd seen modeled at home. Still, they didn't agree about anything at all, and they knew there was no future together after she returned to the U.S. They didn't stay in touch.

Her senior year back at Columbia she had a boyfriend for a few months. He was sweet and kind and smart, and after a while she realized she couldn't stand it anymore. She needed a little pushback or she'd walk all over him without even meaning to. She did her best to let him down very, very gently, and to make sure he knew it was her, not him.

That same year, she applied to all the best law schools and, thanks to her stellar grades, dynamite LSAT scores, and great recommendations from professors, got into Yale Law School.

So off she went to New Haven, where she jumped right in, loving the combative learning style, embracing a new way of analyzing texts and the world around her. She was busier than ever, much to her delight. She made law review, and quickly became a star in her class. As part of fulfilling her pro bono work requirement, she volunteered at the school's human rights law clinic. She really enjoyed it, so she took a seminar with a well-known human rights lawyer, who liked her seminar paper so much that he even asked her to edit an article of his. She started to have some hopes that she'd be able to realize her dreams of being a mover and shaker in public interest law, especially after she spent the summer after her first year doing that kind of work, doing really well, and loving it.

There was just one problem: money. During winter break of her second year, she went home to Artemis to see her family. Aunt Maddie and Uncle Ed were visiting, and after Christmas, the three of them sat down to run the numbers. She had a mountain of debt from college-over $150,000. Her first year at Yale had added considerably to that, even though her great grades had won her a big scholarship that would mostly carry her through the next two and a half years of tuition bills. Her debts would still amount to nearly $200,000 by the time she graduated. There was no way that a public interest law job was going to allow her to make her loan payments. No way.

She was going to have to do something she really, really didn't want to do: suck it up and become a corporate lawyer in a huge, horrible firm, for a few years. If she made enough money that way, she could pay off her loans quickly and move on to the kind of job she wanted and knew she would love. Her Real Job, as she thought of it.

She and Aunt Maddie and Uncle Ed talked about it for a long time, and in the end they agreed: sometimes you just have to do things you really, really don't want to do in order to achieve your goals. You have to keep your eye on the prize, Maddie said. Lizzy knew it was true. So that year she found the least offensive, most lucrative summer internship she could in New York, at DeWitt. Because of the good work she did for them, they offered her a position as an associate following her graduation.

Her inevitable unhappy fate was delayed, though, when she was rewarded for her excellent performance in law school with an offer of a prestigious position clerking for a federal judge. DeWitt happily held the job for her, because it brought them prestige, too. Her new boss was Judge Angus O'Brien on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. He was a crusty old guy, a fighting liberal who took mentoring very seriously and used his considerable power to boost the careers of his best and brightest clerks. On the strength of his recommendation, Lizzy was one of the lucky three dozen or so top recent law school graduates in the country who scored a clerkship at the Supreme Court.

For a year, she worked her ass off for her idol, Justice Esther Simkin Goldberg, only the second woman ever to sit on the Supreme Court. In her heyday, Justice Goldberg had argued in front of the Supreme Court and won some of the country's most important women's rights cases. Lizzy knew that without her leading the fight, the prospects for younger women like herself would be very different. She and Justice Goldberg, who was now ancient, tiny, wizened, and very ill indeed, didn't always see eye-to-eye about the law. But it was a whole new kind of education for Lizzy to watch Justice Goldberg's razor-sharp mind work, to answer her cutting questions, to argue and persuade and contemplate the most important legal issues facing the Court and the country. At the end of the term, Lizzy was incredibly proud to see her own words and arguments reflected in Justice Goldberg's dissenting opinion on a major case about sex discrimination in employment. Of course it would have been even better if it had been the majority opinion.

While Lizzy was clerking for Justice Goldberg, she never went out, and almost never got to see Washington, D.C., because the only two places she ever went were the Supreme Court building and her nearby apartment. She ate with the other clerks in the SCOTUS(1) cafeteria, spent weekends in the SCOTUS library, and had many late nights in her office. It was really intense. Every last one of the clerks was a Type A, fast-talking, hard-driving, passionate law wonk. They lived and breathed the law and politics.

A few of the clerks, mostly older ones, were married, and some of those marriages were challenged by the enormous time commitment clerking required. But most were single, young, and fresh out of law school. Thrown together as they were, most of them paired up at one time or another in intense relationships that flamed out very, very quickly. And that included Lizzy. Early on in her year she was first briefly involved with a super-conservative guy in an opposites-attract kind of thing that quickly devolved into shouting matches about politics and culture ("If you're so against premarital sex, why are you sleeping with _me_?"). Soon after, she connected with a self-righteous Save-the Whales guy whose rigidity on the other end of the political spectrum she quickly came to find intolerable. After that, she resolved never to date ideologues, and also never to get involved with guys at work. Obviously, that meant she didn't date again while she was clerking.

All of this hard work earned her a salary of $74,872, which, even with the loan reduction she got for having a public service job, was hardly enough to make her payments after the exorbitant cost of housing, the cost of buying all the new suits the job required, the loan for a used car when her old one died, and the cost of infinite takeout meals and laundry bills. Clearly this couldn't go on.

And so it was that, after that one glorious year of soaring so high was over, she crashed to the ground, returning to New York to take the job at DeWitt, one of the awful, soul-sucking pillars of the legal profession. To save money, she sold her car, found a tiny apartment downtown just a few subway stops south of her Midtown office, and used it pretty much only for sleeping.

She tried to approach the situation philosophically, remembering to keep her eye on the prize. She would spend as little money as possible, and devote as much of her paycheck to an early loan payoff as she could. Realistically, taking into consideration both the high salary with year-end bonuses and the high cost of living in New York, it would take about three years. She could do it. To keep up her spirits, she would do as much pro bono work as she could while still putting in her billable hours. In her few weekly hours of free time, she would volunteer at the same women's shelter she'd worked at in college. She would find ways to make something good out of a difficult situation, and to be happy, because she just wasn't built for unhappiness.

As it turned out, there were some parts of the job that she enjoyed a lot. She liked being swept up in the energy of the place: the deadlines, the adrenaline, the competition. She was in litigation, and she was ferociously good at it. It let her apply her natural brain power, and the skills and ways of thinking she had learned in law school and at Justice Goldberg's knee, to decimate her firm's opponents. She thrived on the work itself.

But at the same time, she couldn't stand the fact that she was doing a very good job at helping the big, bad firms do something she thought was terrible: taking information that should be in the public domain, sealing it off behind passwords, and charging money to get to it. In an ideal world, she'd be working on the other side, with the freedom of information and privacy advocates who were trying to make it so people could use the internet without being charged, monitored, and tracked. But it was not to be, at least not now.

She got along pretty well with most of her colleagues; while she didn't share their values and priorities, she knew they were decent people at heart. A small but unfortunately vocal minority of them were a lot harder to take, though. They represented a part of the legal profession that she really didn't like. They were preening, obnoxious, and small-minded. They enjoyed kicking their opponents' asses in as humiliating a way as possible, and by whatever means possible. Besides that, raking in the big bucks was all that mattered to them. And most of them were very, very successful. She didn't want to be like that, or to be around people like that. She tried to cope with them, and to keep herself in good humor about the fact that she had to work with them, by observing them and trying to predict their behavior as if she were an announcer on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom: "See the unsuspecting public advocacy lawyer drinking quietly at the watering hole...will she be able to escape alive when the wily corporate predator makes his next argument?" Of course she never said this out loud.

Even among the colleagues she got along well with, she didn't really have what she'd call good friends. There were quite a few other junior women associates in the firm, in other units, but they rarely acknowledged each other because they all wanted to keep their heads down and avoid having anyone think they were rabble-rousers or ball-busters, or anything but team players. There were only two female litigation partners, and even they weren't necessarily her allies in any meaningful way. This made her a little sad.

The only part of her job that she had absolutely no reservations about was her pro bono cases. These were folks who really needed help, and she was happy to do what she could to help people in need-abused women and their children, families down on their luck, immigrants in over their heads in the U.S. justice system. These were the people she'd wanted to help when she'd first decided to enter the law. Emotionally it was hard to see her clients' suffering, but she did her best to protect them and leave them better off than when she first met them. The firm encouraged her and other young associates to take on these cases to gain courtroom experience, but unfortunately the cases didn't rack up billable hours from high-paying clients. So it was a bit of a balancing act to take on as many pro bono cases as she could while still producing for the firm.

She worked 80 to 100 hours a week and had no social life. She rarely spoke to her friends or family except for Charlotte and Jane. Every day she grabbed breakfast at Starbucks on the way to work, ate lunch from the big spread the office put out, read legal briefs on the elliptical trainer in the firm's gym, and had takeout dinner at her desk or in a conference room with the other junior associates. The firm even had a laundry service on contract so that the associates didn't have to waste time on mundane details like making sure they had clean clothes. Granted, it was all work, all the time; but she didn't actually object to that so much. In fact, she kind of liked that part of it. It was the content, and the moral grayness, of the work that increasingly demoralized her.

After nearly two years of this, it was really beginning to wear on her. Sometimes she caught herself feeling cranky, resentful, and ready to see the worst in other people. When she did that, she called Jane, who was always great at calming her down and restoring her natural optimism and high spirits. Still, she knew she had to get out of there, and soon, or she would start to hate herself, or, maybe worse, start to act like some of the jerks in her office. She was getting closer to achieving her financial goals-she had made a big dent in her loan principal, and next she needed to make sure she got a head start on retirement savings and putting away a few months' income as a cushion in case of bad times. She also needed to save for a down payment on a small condo. Then she would finally be able to do what she wanted, and be who she wanted.

Sometimes, like on the occasional evening when she unexpectedly found herself at home relaxing in front of the TV with a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, she asked herself what the hell she was doing and how she'd ended up living her life in this crazy way. She hadn't had a date since she moved to New York. What had happened?

Actually she knew that wasn't a hard question to answer. She had been a great student, and pretty competitive to boot, so wherever she found herself she had always tried to do her best and _be _the best. And this was how you lived your life if you wanted to be the best lawyer. Over time, beginning during law school, it had just come to seem normal. And now, most of the time she was just too busy to question it anymore. It just was. She was 28 years old, and this was her life.

_Footnotes_:  
(1) SCOTUS stands for the Supreme Court of the United States. Clerking at the Supreme Court is the surest way to a brilliant legal career in the U.S.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: And now we pick up the narrative again after that brief message from the Background Department. Thanks once again to my wonderful, thorough, and thoughtful betas, Jan and Barbara._

**Chapter 3**

July 2006

Having somehow survived her PhD graduation celebration with the Bennet family in early June, Jane and Charlie were still going strong by July. They decided to have a Fourth of July bash at Charlie's place, a cabin in a town called Netherfield in the Adirondack mountains upstate. Since the 4th was on a Tuesday, the two of them decided to make it into an extra-long weekend by taking Monday off as well. They were going to head out on Friday evening.

Jane called to invite Lizzy to join them.

"It sounds like fun, Jane. But you know, I really can't take off four days. Billable hours, blah blah blah. How about this: I'll work Saturday and Sunday, and then come up on Sunday evening. Otherwise I would just have to spend Saturday and Sunday on my computer at Charlie's cabin, anyway. Plus, he probably only has dial-up internet access at the cabin, right?"

"Oh, Lizzy..." sighed Jane.

"No, really, it's better this way. I'll take actual vacation days, and I'll even leave my laptop at home. You know that's the only way I can get away from it."

It was true. Unless she completely cut herself off from all communications, work always intruded into her so-called days off and holidays.

"All right. As long as you really leave it at home this time. Promise?"

"I will, I promise." Mentally she kept her fingers crossed as she said this, because she would still have her BlackBerry. "So, can I get the train out there?"

"No, no, not up in the mountains...we'll have to arrange a ride for you." Lizzy heard Jane cover the phone and mumble something, apparently to Charlie. He took the phone.

"So, Liz, what do you say to riding out here with Will? He was planning to come out later, too. He also has to work on Saturday and Sunday. So how does Sunday evening to Tuesday evening sound?"

Lizzy thought that sounded awful, actually, but she thought of Jane and figured she didn't have much choice. Three hours in the car with Will Darcy, ugh.

"Sure, Charlie, if you don't think it would be too much trouble for him. Who else is coming, by the way?"

"Oh, my sisters, Caroline and Louisa. And Louisa's husband, Gil. But they're coming up on Saturday morning."

So, Sunday evening at 7:00, Lizzy stood waiting on the sidewalk outside her apartment building when Will Darcy pulled up to the curb in a Land Rover. He helped her put her bag in the back and they both climbed in.

"Thanks for the ride," Lizzy said, looking out her window. "I know it's out of your way."

"Yeah, no worries."

He didn't say anything else as they made their way over to the Holland Tunnel, out of the city toward I-87 North. Traffic was heavy, and the big vehicle was clearly not made for the narrow city streets. The congestion eased as they made their way into New Jersey, but the silence started to feel oppressive to Lizzy. She decided to lighten the mood by teasing him about his ride.

"So, nice car you've got here. Does the four-wheel drive come in handy when you're parallel parking, shoving compact cars out of your way like a monster truck?" She smiled at him, raising one eyebrow.

He looked at her sideways, checking to make sure she was joking.

"Actually, I usually just park on top of them. I like the feeling of crushing the little guy, you know."

Lizzy laughed, but privately she wondered how much truth there was to that statement.

"And, is that why you don't have a chauffeur? So you don't have to share that thrill with anyone?"

He smiled a tight little smile. "Right. No, I just enjoy long drives, that's all." Then he lapsed again into silence.

After a while she had to admit that the car _was _really comfortable for such a long ride.

* * *

When they arrived in Netherfield several nearly wordless hours later, of course it turned out that Charlie's "cabin" was a sprawling, modern, two-story house all done up in rustic wood on a giant forested lot. The central feature of the first floor was an enormous hot tub that could easily have seated ten people.

Jane greeted Lizzy enthusiastically with a hug, and kissed Will on the cheek, while Charlie helped bring in their bags and showed them to their respective rooms. A few minutes later, Lizzy wandered back downstairs and followed the voices to the huge, shiny kitchen.

"Lizzy!" Jane welcomed her. "We were just talking about what to do for the next couple of days. Oh, I'm sorry, Lizzy, this is Charlie's sister Caroline," she smiled at a tall, thin woman with long, straight blonde hair, "and his sister Louisa, and her husband Gil. Everyone, this is my sister Lizzy."

Will walked into the kitchen. Louisa and Gil nodded and went back to consuming a wheel of brie on the countertop.

Lizzy handed a nice bottle of Finger Lakes region wine over to Charlie and expressed her thanks for his invitation to the cabin.

"It's my pleasure! Thanks, Liz, this looks great. Is it from near your hometown?" Jane and Lizzy nodded. Charlie continued, "Even though it's July, it's so cool here this evening that we were thinking of taking a soak in the hot tub. What do you say?" Charlie put his arm around Jane and smiled.

"Sure, that sounds like a nice way to relax after the long drive. Not that I did any of the hard work, of course," she added, nodding in Will's direction and smiling a little.

Caroline put her hand on Lizzy's arm and said, "Oh, isn't Will just a wonderful driver? I just love going on long drives with him."

"Um..." Lizzy wasn't quite sure what was going on. She hadn't really noticed anything remarkable about his driving, which she now thought was probably a good thing, all things considered.

"I don't recall our ever having gone on a long drive together, Caroline," Will put in.

"There was that time we all went to Bitsy Worthington's wedding," Caroline countered.

"That was on Long Island, and I drove, as I recall," Charles laughed. "Remember? You sat in the back seat and complained about my unsteady accelerator foot."

"Well," said Jane brightly, "Shall we head for the hot tub?"

"Do you need my help for anything? Or should I go get changed?" asked Lizzy.

"Oh, are we wearing swimsuits?" asked Caroline, clearly disappointed. "I'm not sure I brought one."

All that full-body waxing and nude tanning for nothing_,_thought Lizzy to herself, mentally snickering.

"I'm sure there's something around here that you can use. I'll go see what I can find," said Charles, heading for the mud room.

"Oh, never mind, Charlie," Caroline called after him, "probably there's something in my suitcase I can throw on." She turned to Lizzy. "Shall we?" she asked, and ushered her back toward the stairs.

A few minutes later, Lizzy came out of her room wearing her two-piece navy and white striped swimsuit, which looked more or less like a jog bra and some boyshorts. Whatever. It wasn't what she used for swimming laps, but it worked fine for the beach or a good soak. In the hall, she almost bumped into Caroline, who had on a red and gold Indian-print pushup bikini top and a matching, filmy, sarong bottom. She obviously didn't really need the push, because her boobs were so big and preternaturally perky that they were up nearly around her ears already. Lizzy giggled to herself as she followed Caroline down the stairs, Caroline's toe rings clicking on the wooden risers.

Louisa and Gil nodded at Lizzy as she followed Caroline into the kitchen. They were at the kitchen counter, cracking open a couple of bottles of wine.

"White or red?" Gil asked. It was the first time Lizzy had heard him speak, and she was a little startled to hear that his voice was all scratchy like Winnie the Pooh in a Disney cartoon.

"Oh, uh, white, please."

He handed her a very full glass and nodded his head to indicate the direction of the hot tub.

Caroline also took a glass of white wine, and led the way.

Jane and Charlie were already sitting in the hot tub, cuddled close. Will was already there as well, ensconced in the corner nearest Charlie.

Caroline sashayed in and started chattering about something, but Lizzy wasn't sure what because she'd decided to tune her out. Caroline claimed a spot right next to Will. Lizzy slid in next to Jane. Will watched her and opened his mouth to speak, but Caroline interrupted his train of thought by saying something flattering about his physique. So Lizzy smiled at Jane and asked about the plan for the rest of the holiday. Gil and Louisa eventually wandered in and joined them.

For a while they talked about the fireworks on Tuesday night, and the plan to go to the lake, and other innocuous subjects. Will didn't participate much at first, but he started to engage a little more as time went by. Lizzy wondered if he just didn't speak to people outside his social circle; maybe this time together in the tub was blurring that boundary some. As the wine started to loosen everyone up, talk turned to politics, and a bill that the conservative majority in Congress had just passed.

"Well, I'm sure you Republican fat cats liked that a lot," Lizzy said, looking at Will.

He looked confused. Caroline smirked and said incredulously, "Republican? Eliza, surely you know that the Fitzwilliam family is one of the most prominent Democratic families."

Lizzy laughed and smacked her forehead. How could she have been so stupid? "Of course, what was I thinking? Sorry, sorry, my mistake."

Will looked at her with an odd expression and said, "There _are _people in the business world who are concerned with helping the less fortunate, you know. And there are a lot of people on Wall Street who support the Democratic Party."

"Oh, yes, of course." She nodded. She didn't really want to pick a fight with him.

But he wasn't ready to let it go. "No, I mean that they funnel a huge amount of their profits into projects that directly reduce human suffering, things like the Gates Foundation." He spoke calmly, but she could see he was feeling defensive.

Caroline chimed in cloyingly, "Yes, yes, Will's foundation does so much for people in need. Hot lunches for children from the ghetto, right?"

Lizzy's head snapped back at Caroline's casual racism, and she opened her mouth to say something, but Will jumped in before she could.

"Actually, Caroline, my mother's foundation primarily funds arts programs in the New York public schools. And nobody has used the word 'ghetto' that way for about twenty years."

Lizzy had to give him that one. Nicely done, she thought to herself.

"So...what do you do, Caroline?" asked Lizzy.

"Oh, well, I do a lot of volunteer work, and..." she paused.

Louisa chose this moment to speak for the first time that evening. "Caroline is divorced. She doesn't do anything except live off her ex-husband's alimony payments. He's a very successful plastic surgeon." Ah, so that explained a few things.

Caroline splashed her childishly. "It's not true that I don't do anything, Lou, and you know it."

"OK, so what do you do all day, then?" Louisa challenged her. Something about the way she said it made Lizzy think they'd probably had this conversation before a few times.

"I work hard to keep myself fit and healthy," Caroline said smugly.

Louisa translated, "She takes yoga classes at the gym."

"I devote a lot of time to creating a beautiful home."

Louisa said, "She enjoys bossing around the interior decorator and the cleaning lady."

"And I play tennis at the club _very _competitively."

"She flirts with the tennis pro and looks for husband number two," put in Louisa.

"You make me sound so shallow! It's not like you make such a great contribution or anything," said Caroline defensively.

"Fair enough, and admittedly I used to be just like you. But since my breakdown, I've been keeping myself busy," countered Louisa.

Lizzy was almost afraid to ask, but she couldn't help herself. "What do you do, Louisa?"

"Gil's loaded, so I don't have to earn a living. Neither does he. But I write and illustrate children's books, just because I like doing it. It gives me a sense of purpose, which _I _think is important, and it keeps me sane," she said, looking pointedly at Caroline.

In the face of Louisa's TMI, Lizzy refrained from making a joke about Gil being loaded, because plainly he was so loaded with _something _he could hardly sit up in the tub. Instead, she said, "Oh, that's interesting. What kind of books do you write, for what age?"

And the two of them had a nice conversation about Louisa's books, which had, in fact, even won some awards. Caroline turned her attention once again to Will, who obviously was none too pleased about it.

* * *

The next morning, Lizzy was up early because she never needed more than five or six hours of sleep, and good thing, too, because she often didn't get even that much. She wandered downstairs, and sat in her jeans and fleece at the kitchen island, drinking the first of the many cups of coffee she would go on to consume that day. A few minutes later, Will dragged in, wearing a T-shirt and sweats. The hair on one side of his head was flat, and the rest stuck up crazily on top.

"Oh, hi," he said.

"Good morning!" Lizzy was always ready to go the minute she woke up.

"All the damn birds here in the damn countryside woke me up," he groused. He looked really grumpy about it.

She laughed. "I know. After all these years in the city, I can sleep through a garbage truck, a police siren, or a fight outside my window, but a bird? Forget it."

He grunted his agreement. He had been standing in front of an open cabinet door staring inside for quite some time.

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

"Cereal."

"Over here. That's the utility cabinet." She'd had to open just about all the cabinets earlier, looking for the cereal herself.

He poured himself some corn flakes and milk and sat down at the other end of the island to eat them. He was either a rude bastard or seriously not a morning person, and she was still not sure which.

Purely out of politeness, she said, "Uh, I was just going to take a walk in the woods. Would you like to come?"

"No...too early."

Excellent, she thought, and headed out for her walk.

* * *

Later that morning, Lizzy joined Jane, who was whipping up a batch of banana pancakes in the kitchen.

"Hi, sweetie," said Lizzy as she came in and put her arm around Jane. "What can I do?"

"Can you beat the egg whites, please? I want to make the pancakes really fluffy." Apparently Jane, at least, had been paying attention when their mother, Lillian, had been giving cooking lessons. "There's a handheld mixer over in-that-cupboard." She pointed in the appropriate direction with her head.

"Yeah, sure, if you'll tell me exactly what to do."

Jane gave her the instructions, and after a few minutes the egg whites were in hard peaks just as she'd said they would be. How about that? thought Lizzy. She handed the bowl over to Jane.

"What do you hear from home?" Lizzy asked, since Jane was usually in more frequent contact than she was with their parents and two younger sisters, Mary and Lydia. Mary was off in her own Ayn Rand-inspired world of independence, self-reliance, and total intolerance of what she saw as everyone else's idiotic, mediocrity-embracing life choices (1). She was trying to make it as an architect in Rochester. Lydia was about to start her senior year of high school.

"Everyone seems to be doing pretty well, according to mom. Dad is Dad. Mary is MIA, as usual. Mom just took a class on filmmaking, and she's got a couple of interesting ideas for her own film."

"Oh, no," groaned Lizzy. Last year Lillian had taken a stained glass-making class and had filled all the windows in house with weird, melty, goopy, green and brown _objets d'art_. She was almost afraid to hear what she was doing with film.

"One, a piece of conceptual art. I don't know what that means, exactly."

"Um...an interpretive dance about the agony inherent in the human condition, maybe?" suggested Lizzy helpfully.

"Two, a documentary about our family." Jane made a funny moue.

"Oh, shit. I think I'll skip Thanksgiving this year." They both laughed.

By this time Jane had folded the egg whites into the batter and gently added the mashed bananas and cinnamon and was ready to fry everything up on the fancy built-in griddle on the stainless steel stove.

"Actually, I do have some concerns about Lydia." Jane said this in her professional psychologist voice.

"Uh-oh. What did she do this time?"

"She's been acting out a lot, even more than usual. Mom said it looked like she might have been cutting herself again, but she wasn't sure. And apparently she got fired from her summer job and has been spending most of the summer hanging around on the Common with that group of Goth kids. She's stopped doing all her art stuff, too." Lydia was talented with both a camera and a sketchbook, and she had been talking the previous year about applying to art schools for college.

"Oh, God, Janey. What are we going to do?"

"Well, I'm going to drive up there next weekend and see how I can help mom get her through this safely."

Lizzy watched her ladle out the batter onto the griddle. "Do you think she's suicidal?"

"No, it doesn't sound like it, but that's one thing I want to investigate a little more fully."

"Do you want me to come, too? I don't want you to have to deal with this alone."

"I don't think there's any need right now. But I'll let you know." Jane peeked under the pancake. Too soon to flip.

Lizzy reached around Jane's shoulders and gave her a squeeze, just as Will came into the kitchen. He looked more awake now.

"What's for breakfast?" he asked. This rubbed Lizzy the wrong way. Did he think food just magically appeared on his plate? Where did he get off treating Jane like hired help?

"Jane is making banana pancakes, and I'm watching. I can't cook my way out of a paper bag."

He smiled in what she thought was a smug sort of "I figured" kind of way and turned to go into the living room.

Jane called after him, "Breakfast in five minutes. Can you please tell the others?"

"Sure, I'd be happy to," he said, and went in search of Charlie.

Lizzy whispered, "You're asking Mr. High and Mighty for help with a domestic issue?"

"Oh, Lizzy, stop it. He's really very nice."

"I noticed last night that he didn't help clean up before we all turned in. Bet you he doesn't offer to help with the dishes after breakfast either," Lizzy griped. This was something their mother had ingrained in them both, the idea that you always cleaned up after yourself, especially if you were a guest.

"I noticed that, too, and I admit I washed his cereal bowl yesterday when he left it in the sink. I think maybe he's used to having other people do that kind of thing for him," soothed Jane.

"What a jerk," Lizzy snorted.

"No, I didn't mean it that way. I think it's just how he was raised."

"OK, what a spoiled, privileged jerk."

* * *

That afternoon, after they had all gorged on banana pancakes for brunch-and Will had indeed just sauntered off when it was all over without offering to help clean up-Lizzy and Jane drove into town and picked up some groceries at the supermarket and some produce from a farmstand. Jane had something great planned for dinner, something French-ish. Lizzy's job was to make the salad and dessert, both subject to Jane's approval. It didn't seem to bother Jane that all the cooking was falling to her, or that none of the others, including Charlie, even offered to help.

Lizzy asked Jane if she minded, and she said she didn't because she hardly ever got to cook in the normal course of things. Apparently she got a lot of pleasure out of cooking. Lizzy didn't totally get that, but whatever made Jane happy was OK with her.

Lizzy took a break from cooking to try to find a cell phone signal in the house so she could check her BlackBerry and answer some messages. Finally she found one in the vicinity of the den, and sneaked into the darkened room. She discovered that Will had already beaten her to it, and was sitting on the window seat typing away with his thumbs. He looked up, and she nodded at him. She found a leather armchair on the other side of the room and they sat in silence for half an hour, working away.

After a while, gesturing at his phone, he inquired, "Do you mind? I need to make a call."

"Do you need privacy?" She gestured from herself to the door, a little irritated that he would kick her out when she needed the cell signal, too.

"Oh, no, I meant, would it disturb you if I talked on the phone?"

She shook her head no, and then tried her best not to listen as he made a couple of calls. One was very respectful and conciliatory, with an investor, she guessed. Another was direct and occasionally abrupt, talking takeover strategy with someone who was plainly a subordinate. Planning another raid, apparently. She finished up her messages and left for the kitchen before he had rung off.

The something Jane was making turned out to be a rather good _coq au vin_with some nice noodles on the side. Lizzy's contributions of green salad with oil and vinegar dressing, and brownies for dessert, were not too bad, considering, although of course they weren't up to Jane's standard. Jane quickly fixed this by sprinkling some herbs into the dressing, whipping up some fudge sauce out of thin air, and producing some vanilla ice cream that she had apparently pulled out of a hat.

Lizzy's shortcomings in the kitchen once again became the subject of conversation at dinner when Caroline complimented Jane's cooking, even though she couldn't eat anything but the plain noodles and the salad, herself, because she was a vegetarian. Which she had only apparently become since the day before, when she'd had a chicken sandwich for lunch.

"Lizzy made the salad," Jane said generously.

"More like, I washed and tore up the lettuce and you put all the good-tasting stuff on it," Lizzy demurred. "As I said before, I don't cook."

"That sounds like Will," laughed Charlie. "I don't think he knows how to boil water."

"Well, that's OK for a man, but it seems to me that a sophisticated woman should know how to set a good table. Don't you think so, Jane?" asked Caroline.

"I think that depends on whether she enjoys cooking or not," said Jane, sidestepping the issue. But Caroline wasn't ready to let it go yet.

"Will, didn't your mother put on the most fabulous dinner parties? I remember hearing about them at the time," she said, implying that this was something she'd heard from someone who'd been there, and not something she'd read about in _People _magazine when she was 10 years old.

"Yes, she did. That was a very important part of building WPD's investor base and growing the business. My father ran the business, and my mother entertained the clients."

This was the most Lizzy had ever heard Will say about his famous family, and she could see it made him uncomfortable.

Still feeling a little bad for having earlier accused him of being a Republican, she tried to help him out by turning the topic away from his family, _per se_, and toward the assumptions underlying what he'd said. "So, do you think a strict division of labor like that is necessary for a power couple to succeed?" Lizzy asked.

"I don't know if it's _necessary_, but if a man is really devoted to his career, it's certainly difficult for him to find the time for housework," Will replied.

"Don't you think that's a rather antiquated vision of the family?" asked Louisa. "The man as breadwinner and all that?" Lizzy was surprised to hear this, considering that Louisa had said earlier that she and Gil lived off his trust fund. Did that make Gil the family breadwinner, or not? Anyway, Louisa seemed to have some unexpected ideas, and Lizzy thought that was interesting.

Will shrugged. "I suppose that if a really successful woman can find a man who wants to cook, and clean, and do laundry, and raise the kids, well, more power to her. I don't have a problem with that. But the fact is that most men earn more money than most women, and so, looking at this from the perspective of the good of the whole family, it usually makes more sense for the woman to stay home and do that stuff. It's an economic thing for me, not an ideological thing."

This pissed Lizzy off and woke up her inner lawyer. "It may not be an ideological thing, but I think you're missing some of the practical fallout of that kind of division of labor. For one thing, it values the work of the man, productive labor, more than the work of the woman, reproductive labor."

"Well, his work has higher monetary value. He's paid more. It makes sense," Will countered.

"And why is that? That whole '79 cents on the dollar' thing?(2) But anyway, number two, the problem is that it is based in inequality. It makes the man completely indispensable, while the woman is basically interchangeable with any other person who can perform that labor. He can hire someone to do the cooking, cleaning, and child care, while she can't hire someone to earn money for her to live on."

Caroline looked confused, like her head was spinning, and Gil seemed to have dozed off, but everyone else was following along OK.

"I think you're underestimating the affective component here, Lizzy," said Jane. "Many women attach an extremely high positive value to caregiving of all kinds. Even though our society assigns a very low monetary value to caregiving, it still has immense value psychologically, both to the woman and to the people she cares for. It's intense caregiving that helps children grow into well-adjusted adults."

Charlie gazed at Jane with new, even more adoring eyes. He'd never heard her use such big words before, and it was obviously a real turn-on for him.

Lizzy opened her mouth to ask Jane, 1. why couldn't a man do intense caregiving? and 2. couldn't someone besides one of the parents do great caregiving?

But Caroline had heard "monetary value" and "caregiving" in the same sentence, so she jumped in first, nodding wisely, and said, "Yes, I hear that nannies are really expensive in the Tri-State area."

Ignoring her, Will nodded. "That's true, Jane. And someone who is working 80 hours a week simply doesn't have time to do that."

"Aha, so basically a working woman can't be a good mother, is what you're saying," Lizzy snapped.

"No, Lizzy," said Jane patiently, "I'm saying that there are only so many hours in the day."

"And I'm saying that if something, anything, goes wrong, and the man leaves or loses his earning power, the woman is completely screwed," Lizzy grumbled.

"Not if the family has saved wisely," said Will. Right, said Lizzy to herself, thinking of the women she'd met at the shelter, the ones whose husbands had spent all the family's money on booze or drugs and then disappeared. What a rich-boy asshole he was.

"And a trust fund sure helps," said Louisa, breaking the tension. They all laughed.

"That's true of most things, right?" said Will. "Anyway, I just don't think that it's possible for women to 'have it all.' And speaking for myself, I can't imagine doing what I do, and working the way I work, without a stay-at-home wife."

Caroline eyed him hungrily and pushed her chest out a little further.

Lizzy said, "And yet you seem to be doing just fine without one right now."

"Touché," he said, smiling just a bit and dipping his head in her direction.

As always ready to change the subject when the going got rough, Jane stood up and said brightly, "Dessert? Lizzy's creation."

Lizzy smiled. "Well, we'll see how you've managed to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse, Jane." And of course it was delicious with all the embellishments that Jane had added.

As soon as they had all finished dessert, Charlie whisked Jane off to bed, where Lizzy had no doubt he was asking her to lay some four-syllable words on him. Maybe he really was the right guy for Jane.

Will disappeared into the den to check his email on his phone while Gil, beer in hand, went in search of the TV. Caroline, noticing that Will had left, didn't see any point in hanging around, so she announced she was going to begin her hours-long skin care routine and flounced off upstairs. Lizzy and Louisa silently cleared the table, put away the leftovers, and washed and dried the dishes. Lizzy wondered what made Louisa and Caroline so different, and what Louisa had meant by her breakdown, but they didn't know each other well enough for her to ask.

By the time they finished cleaning up, it was about 11:00, and Lizzy followed Louisa into the entertainment room. Gil had found the TV, which took up an entire wall, and was watching "Bad Lieutenant" with the volume down really low.

"Gil, turn that crap off," said Louisa. "I don't want to see Harvey Keitel's bare ass ever again as long as I live."

He complied, the TV screen going to blue, and gestured with his head for her to take a look at the pile of DVDs on the mostly empty bookcase next to the TV.

Louisa read off the titles. "'Pulp Fiction'...'The Piano'...'Reservoir Dogs'...why does Charlie have this huge collection of movies with naked Harvey Keitel in them?"

Gil shrugged.

By this time Lizzy was laughing pretty hard at their routine. Will came into the room, BlackBerry in hand, to find out why.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"We were looking for a movie to watch, but we got bogged down in Harvey Keitel's _oeuvre_," said Lizzy.

"Ah, right. Charlie's Keitel phase. Bad breakup. He found Keitel's viciousness cathartic." Lizzy looked at him questioningly, so he went on. "He has this thing about movies and his love life. For example, he also has all the films of Julia Stiles. He was in love with a girl who looked like her, so he watched her movies when they couldn't be together."

"So did the first girlfriend look like Harvey Keitel?" Lizzy asked.

"Not too much, just a little around the eyes." He didn't even crack a smile.

"Could have been worse-she could have had his ass or some of his other junk," Lizzy commented.

Louisa laughed, and even Gil snickered a little bit.

Will said, "The rest of the DVDs are in that cabinet over there," indicating the corner.

Lizzy wondered how he knew that when he didn't even know where the cereal was. She figured it must be because movies were something that interested him, whereas he just expected the domesticity fairies to take care of the mundane stuff. She walked over, opened the cabinet, and took a look.

"OK, we've got... 'Wall Street'...'Glengarry Glen Ross'...'Barbarians At the Gate'... 'The Hudsucker Proxy'...Wait, wait, I'm sensing another theme here. Did Charlie date Donald Trump or something?"

"No, not that I know of. I think I just put movies about my heroes all in one place last time I was here," answered Will.

"Gordon Gekko first among them, I assume?" she asked, smiling sweetly at him.

"Naturally. Also, Mr. Potter, from 'It's a Wonderful Life.' He's my role model. He seized George Bailey's business after only one late payment to the bank." He said this with a tiny quirk of a smile, but Lizzy wondered if he was really joking or not.

She shrugged and turned back to the DVDs. It turned out that there was a big selection of Grace Kelly films.

"Because she looks like Jane?" asked Lizzy, and Will nodded in confirmation.

Finally they settled on "High Society," with Louisa and Gil draped over Charlie's mega-sized, overstuffed leather sofa, Lizzy next to them on the floor, and Will stretched out in the recliner.

At the end, Lizzy asked no one in particular, "So, do you think Tracy made the right choice, going off with the rich guy instead of the working class hero?"(3)

"I think the point was that it's character, not social class, that matters," said Will, restoring the recliner to its full, upright, and locked position.

Louisa said, "I would definitely have chosen Frank Sinatra instead of Bing Crosby. Yecch." She shivered.

Lizzy laughed and had to agree. "Well, anyway, it's too bad that Charlie never dated a woman who looked like Katharine Hepburn, or we might have gotten to watch the original, 'The Philadelphia Story.' Cary Grant makes a much more attractive C. K. Dexter Haven."

Will shook his head. "No, Hepburn is definitely not his type."

Again with the "types" thing. _Jackass_, thought Lizzy.

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) Ayn Rand wrote a series of novels and non-fiction essays in the 1940s and 1950s, most notably _The Fountainhead_ and _Atlas Shrugged_. They all embrace her philosophy of Objectivism. Mary is trying to be like Howard Rourke, the radically individualistic hero of _The Fountainhead_, by becoming an architect. For what it's worth, I had already decided Mary would be a follower of Ayn Rand before it was announced that Paul Ryan, who also embraces Objectivism, would be Mitt Romney's running mate. So this isn't a swipe at anyone in particular, except maybe my high school boyfriend.

(2) Here, Lizzy is citing the widely known statistic that in the U.S. women earn about 79 cents for every dollar men earn for the same work, although the gap may be closing a bit (to 82 cents) according to figures reported in the _Economist_. Some conservatives argue that the pay gap is exaggerated, and that it's _only _87 cents on the dollar.

(3) "High Society," a 1956 film, stars Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and even features Louis Armstrong as himself. In spite of the interesting cast, it is sadly inferior to the original film, "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), which stars Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart.


	4. Chapter 4

_A/N: On Wednesday, I posted both Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, although Chapter 2 may have gotten lost in the shuffle. It has important background information about Lizzy in it, in case you missed it. And now we pick up right where we left off. All hail Jan and Barbara for their fantastic beta skills! Thank you both very much._

**Chapter 4**

July 4th, 2006

The next day, Lizzy was up early again, long before anyone else, so she took another long walk along the country roads, enjoying the solitude and quiet. Fortunately, she didn't have to get too close to any actual nature. She had had enough of that growing up. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and it promised to be pleasantly warm later.

When she came back into the house, only Will was up, once again wearing sweats and eating cereal at the kitchen island. Shit.

"Hi," she said.

"Oh, hi. Out walking?" He seemed only a little more awake than he had the morning before.

"Yeah. I'm used to getting in an hour or so of exercise every morning in the gym at work, so I needed to get out and move around. Otherwise I get antsy."

"So this is calm for you?" he said, straight-faced, but she thought maybe he was secretly laughing at her.

"As calm as it gets, I guess." She got out a bowl and dumped in some of the cornflakes from the box he had left on the counter, along with the milk he'd left out.

After a minute or two of silence, he got up and put his bowl in the sink, grunted, and wandered off.

OK, Mr. I'm Too Busy and Important to Wash My Own Dishes, Lizzy grumbled to herself as she washed her bowl and spoon, and his too, and put away the cereal and milk.

A few minutes later she sneaked off to the den again to check her BlackBerry. Shortly thereafter, Will came into the room, too, nodding and taking a nearby seat, and they both silently dashed off messages for a good 45 minutes.

* * *

Just before noon, everyone packed up the stuff for a cookout, put on their swimwear, and walked to the smallish lake abutting Charlie's property. He didn't own the whole lake although a big part of the lakefront belonged to him. None of the other residents seemed to be around, so they had the whole place to themselves. There was a picnic table, a grassy knoll, and even a little sandy area a bit further down that looked like it might be good for some kind of sport or other. They'd brought a little propane grill with them, as well as a cooler and several totes full of assorted amusements.

Jane had prepared a bunch of sides and marinated meat, tofu, and vegetables, and she and Lizzy stood around for a while jamming the food onto shiny silver skewers. Lizzy's mouth was watering the whole time she was skewering.

While the two of them got lunch ready, Caroline decided to sunbathe, lying on her back with one leg bent up, propped up on her elbows and her head thrown back like the silhouette of a woman on a trucker's mudflap. Louisa and Gil found a spot under a tree and read, while Will and Charlie went into the water, which turned out to be pretty cold. They splashed around and threw a frisbee around for a while, not easy considering that they couldn't move fast in the water.

After a while, Will and Charlie got too cold and came out of the lake. They stumbled over to the picnic bench where Lizzy and Jane were making lunch. Charlie sat close to Jane and draped his dripping arm over her shoulders.

She jumped. "Sweetie, you're all wet and freezing! Go grab your towel. It's over there with the bags." Charlie got their towels, and he and Will dried off and put their t-shirts back on. Then they sat down on the picnic bench to observe the food preparation, but neither of them offered to do anything. Will just sat and stared at Lizzy while she skewered, and Charlie teased Jane. Naturally it irked Lizzy that neither of them helped. She figured Charlie was Jane's problem, and tried to think of a way to call Will on it without being rude. Jane wouldn't like it.

"Would you like to help?" she asked him, and Charlie by implication. Charlie didn't hear her, apparently, because he didn't react, just kept up his banter with Jane.

"Oh, no, you're the expert. I don't know how to do that kind of thing. I'll just watch," said Will.

Lizzy was kind of amused at how he had, yet again, evaded any responsibility for cooking. She was also a little surprised to find that she apparently now rated some attention, whereas previously he'd always had something better to do in her company. She smiled wryly and said, "I thought we'd established pretty well already that I'm not exactly chef material."

He smiled and said, "True, true."

"So, if even I can do this, I bet you can, too." Demonstrating, she said, "Look, you just take the skewer, and stab it through the meat. Or veggies, we're doing them separately. You can do it-you have lots of experience-"

"-sticking it to the little guy. Yeah, yeah," he said, with a little half-smile. He picked up a skewer, and set to work somewhat gingerly, as if he wasn't accustomed to touching raw meat. Which, Lizzy thought, he almost certainly wasn't.

"So, I don't think I ever asked," Lizzy said to Will, "how do you and Charlie know each other?"

"College," he said.

"And where was that?"

"In Boston," he said unhelpfully. But she had learned in law school that that was code for Harvard. Harvard grads always avoided saying it straight out. It was a reverse snobbery thing. Or maybe it was just a regular snobbery thing.

She chirped, "Oh, Harvard! Of course."

He nodded. "We were hallmates in Dunster House."

"That's one of the residential colleges, right?"

"Yeah, basically."

"Any famous alums?"

"Umm...Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were roommates in Dunster House."

Caroline heard the word "Harvard" and decided she'd sunbathed long enough. She got up and sauntered over.

"Sorry, I wish I could help with the skewering or whatever it's called. But I can't touch the meat. I'm a vegetarian, you know."

Everyone nodded silently.

Lizzy carried on, "And did you and Charlie pledge one of those private clubs...Final Clubs or whatever?" These were hundred-year-old all-male organizations, and she had heard they were the last bastion of the rich male WASP, the Old Harvard. She was curious about them.

Charlie chimed in cheerfully, "Yes, he helped me punch Raven."(1)

"So, any tattoos in awkward places, like George Shultz?" Lizzy asked Will. George Shultz was a former Secretary of State who allegedly had a tattoo of the Princeton Tiger on his bum as a result of his membership in an exclusive eating club there.

Charlie guffawed and said, "If he told you, he'd have to kill you."

Lizzy laughed, and said, "So, what was it like, Charlie?"

Charlie said, "Well, you know, standard fraternity kind of stuff, mostly. But I have to say that Raven opened some doors for me, thanks to Will."

Lizzy asked, "So you're not a legacy like Will here?"(2)

"Oh, no. My grandfather barely finished high school. He made his money in construction, and Dad went to Rutgers."

This made Lizzy look at Charlie in a different light. In spite of his easygoing, genial manner, he must be no dummy, she thought, if he had gotten into Harvard on his own merits.

But Caroline gasped and said, "Charlie! You make our family sound so low. Our grandfather was a self-made businessman and a respected member of the community."

Charlie nodded. "That's true, too. But he didn't go to college."

"Oh, hush," said Caroline.

Later, after they'd finished grilling the shish kebabs and were standing around the picnic table eating them, Lizzy asked Jane, "Did we bring any hot sauce? Or could I go back and get some from the house?"

Will had been hovering nearby, and he said, "I looked for some earlier, but I couldn't find any."

"No, I'm sorry, I don't think we have any," Jane apologized.

"Rats. Oh, well. Thanks, Janey." Lizzy turned to go, but Will was standing in her way.

"Big hot sauce fan, are you?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's been two whole days with no capsicum, and my taste buds are going into withdrawal. I need a fix, man."

He smiled. See, he was pretty nice-looking when he did that. He should do it more often, she thought.

Caroline the Vegetarian poked at one of the tofu shish kebabs on the plate and ended up taking a small piece of lamb and a lot of vegetables.

After they'd all eaten, Lizzy and Jane cleaned up with a little help from Louisa, Caroline resumed her mudflap pose on the shore, Gil retreated to his tree with his novel, and Charlie and Will decided to toss around a football on the sandy stretch. Lizzy noticed that Will chose the side closest to Caroline so that he could keep his back to her and avoid seeing her display.

Once all the clearing up was done, and Jane had sat down with her copy of _The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down_, Lizzy wasn't really sure what to do. She was used to doing _something _all the time. But she didn't have her laptop, and she couldn't check her phone or she'd give away the game to Jane. It would be antisocial to go back to the house. She wished that she'd brought a crossword puzzle, or that Charlie had something in his library besides Danielle Steele and Jackie Collins novels. She wondered, was he just a romantic? Were they Caroline's? Ex-girlfriends'? Weird.

While Lizzy was standing there thinking about how to pass the time, Caroline called out to her. "Eliza, come over here and sit with me."

What the hell is she up to? thought Lizzy. But because she didn't have anything better to do, Lizzy wandered over and sat next to her.

Just as she opened her mouth to ask Caroline what she wanted, Caroline said, "You need to get some color-you're so pale! I guess this comes from slaving away in an office all day." So _that _was her game, was it?

"True enough. But, I like to think it will also keep me from having too much sun damage when I'm older. You know, spots on my arms and chest and all that." Lizzy casually glanced over at Caroline's decolletage-bountifully displayed this time in a turquoise and gold pushup bikini top-as if she suspected Caroline might already have some spots. Like a leopard.

"Will, don't you think Lizzy could use some sun?" Caroline called out.

"What?" he said, turning halfway around to look at them. The football bonked him smack in the stomach-Charlie's wobbly throw had been right on target. "Oof!"

"Are you all right?" cooed Caroline, not moving.

"I'm OK. No, I think she looks fine. And it's smart not to get too much sun exposure." He threw the ball back to Charlie.

"But you obviously spend a lot of time out in the sun-you're so...bronzed." Caroline batted her eyelashes at Will. Lizzy had to admit he looked pretty good in a lean, athletic kind of way, but she sure as hell wasn't going to say anything about it.

Deciding that it was better to do something, anything, than to sit here playing along with Caroline, Lizzy jumped up and said, "Hey, can I join in?"

"Sure, Liz!" said Charlie, and he threw her the ball.

She caught it, and threw it to Will, but it went end-over-end instead of making a tight spiral. That was embarrassing. She hated looking like a stupid girl when it came to sports. "Sorry. My dad is a baseball guy. He taught me to throw a baseball, but it doesn't seem to work quite the same way as a football."

Will tossed the ball to Charlie, and said, "No, it's a different motion. A baseball guy, huh?"

"Yeah, he's a college professor. You know, an effete intellectual, like George Will. They're all into baseball."

Charlie nodded and made another wobbly throw to Lizzy. "That's true. All the smart guys are baseball fans."

"It goes without saying that Charlie is a baseball fan," Will deadpanned. They all laughed.

Lizzy made another end-over-end toss to Will. He picked the ball up off the sand and said, "You're throwing it like a girl. I can show you how to throw a spiral."

Throwing like a girl, huh? If she only had a softball, she'd show him a thing or two about "throwing like a girl." She'd throw a 65-mile-an-hour riseball like a girl right at his sorry ass. But she didn't have a softball. And now it would look like she'd just asked to join in so he could stand close behind her, and pull her arm back, and put her hand in the right position, and all that. Caroline was glaring at her, clearly mad that she hadn't thought of it herself, but unwilling to get up and ask for a lesson since Lizzy had beaten her to it.

"Oh, sure, why not?" Lizzy sighed, resigned. So he did stand close behind her, and pull her arm back, and put her hand in the right position, and show her how to throw without flipping her wrist down like with a baseball. She tried to keep her distance, but unfortunately some physical contact was inevitable. And her throws got better, but not by much. Charlie had to chase a few of them down and even fish a couple out of the water.

"Well," she said, trying to hide her embarrassment, "so much for that. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, I guess." She really hated being hopeless at things.

Will just shrugged his shoulders. Apparently he hadn't expected much more than that from a girl. Charlie complimented her on her great progress in such a short time.

"So, thanks for the lesson," she said with false cheer. "I should probably go help Jane pack things up. We should get back to the city before it gets too late, right? I need to prep some stuff for work tonight." It was already almost 4 pm. Will and Lizzy were going to drive back to the city tonight, while the others drove to Saratoga Springs to watch the fireworks.

And so an hour or so later, after they had both surreptitiously checked their BlackBerrys in the den, Will and Lizzy said their goodbyes to the others. Louisa's wordless smile let Lizzy know that she'd enjoyed their interactions as much as Lizzy had. Who knows, maybe if Jane and Charlie stayed together, they might even see each other again. Gil's silent farewell was equally friendly, but Caroline's clearly had another meaning. After Jane and Lizzy had effused over each other sufficiently, Charlie kissed Lizzy's cheek and hugged Will while slapping him enthusiastically on the back. Lizzy and Will were finally able to hit the road in his Land Rover by 4:45. Once again, the three-hour ride passed in near silence.

When they arrived at her building, he helped her get her bag out of the back, and then they stood awkwardly on the sidewalk. "OK, well, thanks a lot for the ride," she said. "Take care."

"My pleasure. You, too." He got in the car and drove off.

She headed up to her apartment, dumped off her stuff, changed her clothes, grabbed her laptop, and headed to Midtown in search of some falafel, with _lots _of hot sauce. A few minutes later, she sank into her leather office chair, and thought, "Oh, thank God! Back to work at last."

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) On the Harvard Final Clubs, see the entry in Wikipedia, The Source of All Knowledge According to My Students.  wiki/Final_club. They have names like Fly, Owl, and Phoenix. "Raven" is made up. But Vice President Al Gore and the actor Tommy Lee Jones really were roommates in Dunster House, one of the residential colleges. That is kind of like a dormitory, but it also has tutors and faculty members in residence, a dining hall, and a lot of social activities.

(2) Someone is a "legacy" if they are admitted to an educational or social institution in whole or in part because key relatives of theirs are already members.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Thanks as always to Jan and Barbara, betas extraordinaires, who suffered through multiple drafts of these coming chapters until I got them right-er. _

**Chapter 5**

August 2006

A few weeks later, Lizzy started working on a case that brought her to a different part of Midtown from her office. So on a sticky August morning at 8:15, head down, she opened the door to the Starbucks closest to the clients' offices and walked smack into Will Darcy, who, until that very moment, had had a hot venti something or other in his hand.

"Oh!" she cried. "I'm so sorry. Are you OK?"

"Yes, fortunately it's just my shoe," he said, looking down at said shoe. His very expensive navy suit was, luckily, untouched.

"Are you sure? Please, let me get you another coffee."

"Really, it's not necessary." He was understandably grumpy about it. Probably his sock was wet, Lizzy thought. The coffee _had _been a venti, after all.

"Please, I'd like to, and I have to wait in line for mine anyway."

He grudgingly agreed and they turned together to wait in line. Periodically he shook his wet foot.

"What did you have?" she inquired.

"Umm...a venti caramel mochaccino."

She laughed. "Really? I had you pegged for an Americano with a couple extra shots of espresso, black, to get you going in the morning."

"Sorry to disappoint," he grumbled, obviously still in the process of waking up.

"No, no, I just think it's interesting, is all. Who would have guessed?"

"I admit, I do have a bit of a sweet tooth."

"Boy, I guess." She smiled.

She ordered, they got their coffee, and then they stood awkwardly looking at each other for a few moments before she said,

"Well, I have to get back to work. Just around the corner, working on a case." Actually if she left right then she would probably have to wait in the lobby until the office opened, but she didn't want to stand here in awkward silence staring at Will Darcy for the next half hour.

"OK. I should go, too."

"I'll probably be in here a lot for the next few weeks, you know, I've got to have my morning coffee, so..."

"All right."

"Bye."

She hoped she wouldn't run into him again. After all, she'd given him fair warning so he could avoid her tomorrow.

But the next day when she stopped in for her triple cappuccino, there he was again, this time sitting at a tiny table by the door doing the _New York Times _crossword puzzle. She didn't really want to stop, but just nodding and walking on by seemed rude considering they'd spent a weekend together recently. So after she got her coffee, she did pause and say good morning.

Instead of letting her pass, though, he said, "I wonder if you would know the answer to this-who wrote 'Sleepless in Seattle'? Is it 'Nora,' for Nora Ephron?"

She mentally rolled her eyes, but very politely said, "Oh, sorry, I don't know. I don't really follow rom-coms. I'm more of a classic films person."

"Right, thanks. Join me? There are a few others here I can't get-art and literature stuff, mostly."

She didn't really want to, but thought it might seem impolite if she just ran off, so she perched on the other chair and looked at the puzzle he held out for her to see.

She noticed that he was doing the puzzle in pen. "Impressive-going straight for the ink! Pretty sure you know the answers, eh?"

He cracked a smile. "Not really. I have to cross things out a lot, but so what?"

That was a bold and confident approach, but also showed an independent streak and a willingness to make mistakes. An interesting aspect of his character.

"Right, take a chance! Plus, it's only a Tuesday puzzle..." The_ New York Times _crossword puzzles were well-known for being very easy on Mondays and getting progressively harder as the week went on, so that Saturday's puzzle was almost impossibly difficult. Or this was well-known to people who cared about crossword puzzles, anyway.

He nodded in agreement, and pointed out a couple of the clues he needed help with. She reeled off, "Arcimboldo the Magnificent...Constantinople..."

Together they finished the puzzle in five minutes before they both had to dash off in their separate directions.

He was there again on Wednesday, and Thursday. Each day she thought about going to a different Starbucks, but, in a city with a million of them, there just didn't seem to be another one conveniently located nearby. So, with some reluctance, she let him rope her into sitting down and doing the puzzle with him.

She didn't understand why he wanted her to sit with him, though. After all, given his comments at the museum about her not being his type, it was clear he wasn't interested in her that way. Was he just lonely? That seemed unlikely. Very dedicated to completing the crossword puzzle? It didn't make sense at all.

They didn't talk much while they did the puzzle. A few times, he stopped mid-clue and took a call, negotiating or directing or cajoling someone. She observed him, saw the look of concentration on his face, and heard that he was very good at what he did. She thought that in some alternate universe she might have found both his person and his persona attractive. But, sadly, not so much in this one.

A few interesting bits of information did slip out in the process of puzzle-solving, though. As he was filling in the word TOKUGAWA in response to the clue asking the family name of the last shogun in Japan, she asked, "How come you know so much about Asian history?"

He didn't look up as he answered, "I majored in East Asian Studies."

"Really?" She wouldn't have guessed that in a million years.

"Yes. How come you know so much about European literature and philosophy?" he asked, glancing at her.

"I read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford my junior year, and my dad is an English professor." She spilled this, more than she might have otherwise, without even thinking because she was still stunned at his earlier answer.

"Well, there you have it." He went back to the puzzle.

Friday, he wasn't there when she arrived, and she felt relieved, enjoying the absence of the weird tension between them. But he was back on Monday, with no explanation for his absence. Not that she cared, but it was odd.

On Tuesday, as they finished up the puzzle and got up to go, she said, "Well, I won't be coming in here anymore, since I'm wrapping up the work I have to do in the neighborhood. Thanks for sharing your crossword with me."

"Oh!" he said, sounding surprised. "Ah, well. I guess we'll just have to continue over dinner."

She did a double take. "What? I mean, I'm sorry?" Was he saying what she thought he was saying?

"Go out to dinner with me." He said this with some confidence, as if he expected her to jump at the chance.

"Oh." This was unexpected, and more of a command than an invitation. And damn presumptuous, too. Without even having to think about it, she answered without much emotion, "Well, thank you, but no, I don't think so."

Now it was his turn to look stunned. It was a good thing, she suddenly thought, that they were still standing next to their table in the dark back corner of the shop, faces away from the other customers. She hoped nobody was watching or listening.

"Why not?" he more or less demanded to know. Oh, crap, not this. This was the kind of thing that the men at work did when she turned them down.

In a businesslike tone, she said, "Well, for several reasons. But the most important one is that I know I'm not your type, so I don't understand why you're asking."

"Whoa! Wait, whatever gave you that idea?" He seemed genuinely shocked.

"I heard what you said to Charlie that night at the museum." She said this as a statement of fact, suppressing the sting she still felt about it.

He flushed. "Oh, shit. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean it."

She looked at him, skeptical, eyebrows raised. He had seemed quite sure at the time.

He flushed a little deeper. "Well, maybe I did, then, but I've changed my mind. I think you're one of the most attractive women I've ever met, actually." He was very sincere. She mostly felt embarrassed by his words, but maybe also just a teensy bit flattered, so she waved it off.

"Hmmph. I'm sorry, but I had no idea, in light of what you said before..." she trailed off.

"But you kept coming here to meet me for coffee, so I thought-you know."

"I was coming here for coffee, yes, but that was all." She was very firm about this. Maybe he was used to other women playing flirting games with him, but that was not her _modus operandi_.

"I see." He was very controlled, she realized, but she thought maybe she saw a little flicker of something in his eyes. Disappointment? Hurt?

She knew that in a negotiation or a trial, this would have been the time to go in for the kill. She was trained to spot weakness, and go straight at it. But this wasn't a negotiation or a trial. And suddenly she realized that it had been a long, long time since she had last had a conversation where her words might have the power to injure someone's heart, rather than just his pride or his ego.

She felt something inside her shift a little, a kaleidoscope turning, giving her a different view. It was possible he might not be the egomaniac she'd always thought. For the first time, she looked at him and saw shades of a person, not just a symbol of things she didn't like.

That changed things a bit. Had his crossword puzzle routine been some kind of flirtation? More gently, she said, "I guess that's not how it looked to you, then."

He shook his head

"Look," she said, "I'm sorry. Maybe another time."

He opened his mouth to say something, but she turned and fled.

* * *

During the afternoon, she left her client's office for a few minutes to stretch her legs and grab a bite to eat. And, to be honest with herself, she was still feeling unsettled after her earlier confrontation with Will. She called Charlotte for a reality check as she was walking down the street.

"Charlotte, you're not going to believe what just happened..." and she told her the rest of the story.

"Well," said Charlotte, "I agree it's a little weird that he just assumed...but on the other hand, you did keep going back there, so I could see why he might think that."

Lizzy scoffed.

"Look, Lizzy, here it is. Are you interested in dating, at all?"

"Oh, I don't know. I've been working so much, and I never meet any guys except for the ones at work, and as we know it would be a very bad idea to go out with any of them..."

"Stop evading the question. Is that enough for you? How long has it been since you went out with a guy?"

"Over two years."

"That's a long time. No nookie in the meantime, right?"

Lizzy scuffed her feet as she stood at the corner waiting for the light to change. "Nope."

Charlotte laughed. "I know how hard up I'd be feeling if I were in your shoes. He's pretty good looking right? In person?"

"Well...yes."

"And he says he thinks you're hot. So there you go. I say, go for it. Scratch that itch."

"Charlotte, I don't even...You know that's not enough for me." She crossed the street, head down.

"What else do you want, then?"

"I want some kind of intellectual connection, too." And she had always had that, too, with the guys she had gone out with, no matter for how long.

"Is he smart?"

"Yes, but he's also spoiled, entitled, bossy..."

"Sounds like someone else I know." Charlotte laughed at her.

Lizzy laughed back at her. "Thanks a lot! Some friend you are. I'm trying to say, he's practically the poster boy for the stuff I'm really, really struggling with at work."

"I know, sweetie. OK, this is the last thing I'm going to say about this. Obviously he's not perfect, but here's an interesting opportunity that has come your way, and who knows when another will come along? Why not give dinner a shot, at least. Get out, have some good food, maybe an interesting conversation. It'll be either a good time or a good story, as they say."

"Hmmph. OK. I'll think about it. Thanks, Charlotte."

By this time, Lizzy had found the little Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall takeout place she'd been looking for, so she went in and ordered her favorite, _banh mi_, a baguette with grilled meat inside. She sat down with it on a stool in the front window. The sandwich was kind of messy and she'd rather not eat it back at the office.

As she enjoyed her lunch, she thought about what Charlotte had said. Maybe she should accept the invitation, if it was still on offer. That was a surprising turn. She couldn't quite understand herself here. She'd been so convinced that he was awful, and now she wasn't sure. Was it just because he'd said she was attractive? Was she that vain? Had she really let his one, nasty, overheard comment influence all of her subsequent interpretations of his behavior? If so, that surely reflected very poorly on her own character. Maybe she'd jumped to some conclusions about him out of her own wounded pride. On the other hand, he was a snob, and his job didn't speak very highly of _his _character. But Jane said he was a good person, and she was usually a good judge of character, if a little overcharitable sometimes. Maybe he would seem different if she looked at him without the negative filters his initial insult had placed over her eyes.

And then she glanced up, her mouth full, just in time to see Will Darcy turning into the restaurant. Shit. Of all the gin joints in all the cities in all the world, he had to walk into this one. She wondered if she should run away, or hide, or ignore him.

But it was too late. As soon as he walked in the door, he turned his head and saw her sitting in the window not five feet from him. He blanched. She wondered if he could tell just from looking at her that she'd been thinking about him.

She waved weakly and covered her mouth with a paper napkin. Aargh. She really hoped they could both act like grownups.

"Oh! Hi," he said after a moment. "Great sandwiches, aren't they?"

She nodded, silently, chewing, and gestured, inviting him to sit down on the stool next to her, moving her bag from the stool onto her lap as she did so.

He pointed toward the counter. "Just let me get mine..."

While he was gone, she thought,_ God. What can I possibly say?_

By the time he returned with his meal she had recovered sufficiently to ask, "So, what did you get?" And then they had an awkward conversation about _banh mi_, and where to get the best Vietnamese food in the city. He really liked Asian food of all kinds, he said, and not just the gourmet stuff, either.

She nodded that she did, too. "Yeah, in college one of my friends used to take me to a lot of down-home Chinese places in Chinatown where she'd go with her family. This place I found on my own, somehow, though."

"You can get a lot of good stuff in New York, of course, but the real street food is harder to find, don't you think? No roasted sparrows on bicycle spokes or that kind of thing."

"What? Gross!"

He smiled a little. "That was one of the street foods we had in Shanghai back in the day."

"Back in the day, when?" she asked. This was interesting.

"During college. I studied in China my junior year." Even more interesting. Before, she would have pegged him for Paris, maybe.

"Wow. Oh, I remember, you said you were an East Asian Studies major, so it all makes sense, suddenly." By now Lizzy had finished her sandwich, and was folding up the paper wrapper. She needed to get back to the office, and she could feel her BlackBerry buzzing in her bag.

He watched her as she stood up. She said, "Look, I...I have to get back to the office right now, but I'd really like to hear more about your adventures, if the invitation still stands." She wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do. She didn't want to lead him on, after all, but lunch had been pleasant enough. And Charlotte was right-she would have a good time or a good story to tell afterwards.

He looked surprised, but replied, "Yeah, sure. Should I text you or something?"

Lizzy nodded, and he dictated his number so she could text him.

"OK, there you go. Gotta run. Take care," she said, and she was out the door.

* * *

Two Wednesdays later they met for a late-ish dinner, at 9:00 since they both needed to work till then. They had had to postpone once when he had been called out of town on business. They met at a nice Thai place not far from both their offices in Midtown. As she was walking there, she still wasn't sure if this was a good idea, in spite of what Charlotte had said. Yes, he had a number of attractive attributes. But she still had a lot of reservations. Well, anyway, it was just a date.

He was already at the restaurant when she got there, and he stood up when she walked over to the table. She sat right down on her chair before there could be any awkwardness about holding chairs or handshakes or kisses on the cheek or whatever.

"So, how was Pittsburgh last week? Or, as my law school friend from there used to call it, Pigsburgh?" she asked with a little smile. She actually kind of liked Pittsburgh.

"Nothing much to report. The investor just needed a little sweet talk. I was only there for a couple of hours, in and out."

She nodded.

Silently, they both perused the menu.

"Would you like to share, I mean, eat family style? Or order separately?" he asked. He said it as though it was a test of some kind.

"That depends. You like spicy food, right?"

"Yes, the hotter the better. This place is known for serving food as hot as it is in Thailand."

She raised her eyebrows. Then she smiled, challenge accepted. "Excellent. Let's share."

"How about if we start with some Tom Yum soup?" he asked. It had three little bombs next to it on the menu. "Or would you rather have something mild, like Tom Kha Gai, the coconut soup?"

"No bombs? Please. Tom Yum, of course. How about Larb Kai?" That had four bombs. They agreed on a couple of other dishes, including the tofu dish that was the only five-bomb item on the menu.

When they ordered, she made sure to ask for a Thai iced tea to cool down, if necessary.

They sat in another uncomfortable silence for a while. "So, how do you know your Thai food so well?" she asked, just to make conversation while they waited for their food. Lizzy found she couldn't look at him, so she looked at a statue of an elephant in the corner instead.

"Well, I don't really know it that well. But I did travel a little in Southeast Asia."

"When you were studying in China?"

"Yes, before I headed home."

"So, how did you end up doing this whole Asian Studies thing?" This was an interesting puzzle to her.

"I was...um... quote unquote very strongly encouraged to learn Chinese, because China was going to be the business powerhouse of the 21st century. And of course it is."

She noticed he pointedly didn't say who had thus encouraged him. "But...?"

The soup and the Larb Kai arrived, so they paused for a moment.

"Well, I was also very strongly encouraged to major in Economics, so I could take over the family business. I was more interested in the history and culture stuff than the economics, so I managed to eke out a double major in East Asian Studies as a compromise." He said this without much emotion, and she wondered how he felt about it. But she also hesitated to ask much more because he was so obviously sensitive about talking about his family.

"You don't sound very happy about that," she ventured, feeling like she was taking a chance here.

He shrugged. "You know, things turn out how they turn out. I ended up running the business just a few years later, so probably it was better this way." Apparently he didn't feel like talking about it any longer.

"Have you been able to keep up your Chinese, at least?"

He shrugged again. "Not really. There hasn't been much call for using it at WPD. We do some work with Chinese companies, but I'm not involved in that side of things. I suppose that might change in the future, though."

"Why's that?"

"Well, because as the Chinese economy keeps growing, I think they will probably become potential investors, not just outsourcers. We might eventually acquire some Chinese firms, too. And that's my side of the business."

"I see. So, on a given day, what do you actually do in your job?"

He explained that it was mostly investor relations, dealing with the board, establishing overall strategy of the company, and overseeing and approving all the big deals. It kept him very, very busy, he said. She nodded. That, she could understand.

"The food is great," commented Lizzy, discreetly wiping one eye with her napkin. "Just the way I like it."

The rest of the dishes came, and Lizzy soon discovered that they were going to test even her limits for spiciness. Especially the tofu dish, which was hands down the hottest thing she had ever eaten in her life, and that was saying a lot. She tried all the little tricks she'd learned over the years: quietly sucking in air through her teeth; holding the iced tea, which had a lot of sweetened condensed milk in it, against her tongue; drinking water. But none of it worked. Then she looked up at Will. He was quietly mopping his forehead with his napkin.

"You know," she said conversationally, "this is really fucking hot."

He laughed. "Yes, it is. Too much?"

"No, but let's at least admit it. That'll make it easier to enjoy it properly." He nodded in agreement.

They consumed the rest of the meal with great zeal, downing many glasses of ice water, frequently wiping their brows, and talking about adventurous eating they had each enjoyed in the past. They finished it off with a dessert of sticky rice with sweetened condensed milk and ripe mango.

As Lizzy put down her spoon, she sighed. "Wow, that was fantastic. I haven't enjoyed a meal that much in...I don't know how long."

"Yeah, much better than takeout at my desk, or sandwiches at the office, or some awful boring crap with a client."

"I know! You can't ever take them anywhere challenging or interesting. It's always Italian, or steak, or..."

"Or hotel restaurants. Augh."

The waiter came over with the bill and put it on the table. Lizzy reached out to grab it, but Will was too quick.

"No, really, let me get it," she said.

"No, no," he said, holding the check folder up high where she couldn't reach it. "Please, I invited you. Of course I'll get it. Maybe you can pay next time...?"

It had been a fun evening, she had to admit, more than she had thought possible. But she still wasn't sure yet whether she liked him that much, enough to spend more of her scarce free time with. This was decision time, she realized.

She thought for a minute, not wanting to stare at him too obviously. What did she feel? Was there something there for her? She had to admit that she thought he was handsome, and he had a nice smile on the rare occasion when he chose to show it. He was tall and rangy, obviously fit, not as if he lifted weights for the sake of lifting weights, but rather as if he worked out so he'd be able to perform better at something else he enjoyed...racquetball? Sailing? Polo? Whatever it was that people like him did. So far so good. What about the conversation? He was smart-she'd learned some interesting, unexpected things from and about him tonight. None of this solved the basic problem that he was a corporate raider, of course. But it was just dinner, right? Nothing serious. So, what the hell, why not? It was better than a lot of other things she could imagine doing.

"OK, I'll get it next time. But right now..." She looked at her watch. "Shit, it's already eleven, and I have to go back to the office for a couple of hours."

She rummaged through her leather bag for her BlackBerry. "Sorry, looks like I have a bunch of messages from partners wanting revisions. I have to take care of this right away. Text me to set up a time?"

He nodded, asking, "Texting is better than calling?"

"Yes. I never know when I'll be able to talk," she said, standing up.

"OK."

"Thanks for dinner. It was great." She smiled, and before he could get up, or move closer to her, she was out the door and into the night.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: Thanks as always to the lovely, the brilliant, the oh-so-patient and understanding Jan and Barbara, my wonderful betas. Let's see what happens next._

**Chapter 6**

August 2006

The next day, he texted her about trying to schedule another dinner. He was hoping, it seemed, for something sooner, but because of various work obligations she wasn't available until the following Saturday. She had developed a taste for Jamaican food while studying at Oxford, so she suggested a higher-end Caribbean place she knew over near Washington Square Park, called Lulu's.

He arrived a few minutes late, apologizing profusely and saying he hadn't been able to get a cab Uptown.

"Don't you have a driver?" She was curious about this, because she thought all rich guys had drivers.

Sitting down and putting his napkin in his lap, he said, "No. I have a car service take me to work in the morning, but otherwise my schedule is so erratic that I don't see the point of paying someone to sit around waiting for me. And, I can't get any work done in the car, anyway, so I might as well drive myself a lot of the time."

"Really? Why's that?"

He flushed a little, high spots on his cheeks. "Um, well, I don't reveal this to just anyone, but I get carsick if I try to read in the back of a moving vehicle."

This was so unexpected that she had to clap her hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. She immediately felt terrible and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know it's not funny. Motion sickness is not funny at all."

He smiled a crooked little smile and said, "I don't know. It's not every day that you see a guy in a suit barfing out the window of a Town Car."

"Not quite the Captain of Industry vibe that you're shooting for?" She grinned back.

"No, not good for my image at all."

She smiled to herself and thought this was another interesting indication that he was human, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

And for two hours that night, they both turned off their phones and enjoyed the food and the company just like two ordinary human beings. He ordered the coconut curry kingfish, and she had jerk lamb chops.

"So, is this like the Jamaican food you had in England?" he asked.

She laughed. "No, not really. That was, um, not quite so fancy."

This led to a longer discussion about her studies at Oxford, the very intense one-on-one tutorials she'd had there and how different that was from the American educational system.

"A lot of the other American kids put off doing all the reading and writing until the end of the year when they had to take their exams, but I loved it so much that I couldn't wait to read and talk about the books every week with the tutor. Did I mention that I was reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics? It really turned me on to politics and all that. We used to stay up all night drinking wine and talking about Big Ideas." The excitement of that time in her life lingered, and her eyes sparkled as she talked about it, a huge smile on her face.

"So is that how you got interested in the law?" He looked amused, but in a friendly way.

"Yeah, and it also got me interested in social justice issues. That's really why I went to law school. I wanted to make a difference for people who didn't have the resources to fight the big fights. Which is why it's so ironic that now I'm working at a 'BigLaw' firm and making a difference, in the wrong direction." She looked down at her plate.

"Oh, I'm sure it's not as bad as all that," he protested.

"No, I'm not exaggerating, seriously. The last case I worked on, I was defending a big software corporation that was being sued by a small software developer for copyright infringement. He was absolutely in the right-they had stolen his idea and made millions on it, and they even admitted it to me, too. But they won on a ridiculous technicality that I am ashamed to say I figured out all by myself." She put down her fork. Talking about this made her lose her appetite.

He looked a little uncomfortable at that, and changed the subject.

"Ummm...Where did you live at Oxford?"

"In a flat off campus. It was really my first time living totally on my own, doing everything for myself. At Columbia, I lived in the dorms the whole time. But at least I managed to avoid going to Artemis College, where my dad teaches. That would have been a little too close for comfort."

"I see. You said he teaches...English Literature, right?"

"Right. Hence my decision to major in anything but English Lit," she laughed. "You know, defining myself in opposition to the strongest parental figure in my life. A normal part of growing up." Then it occurred to her that maybe he hadn't had the same choice, and she wished she hadn't said that. It felt like there were conversational minefields in every direction sometimes.

He laughed, but with a slightly bitter feel to it. "Yes, it is. Better late than never, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I've been tossing around the idea of changing our focus at WPD."

"To what?"

"Well, there are several possibilities based on our current strengths. Basically I'm thinking about whether it might be possible to reorient the company away from takeovers, and into funding tech startups, maybe green tech or innovative biotech or something like that..."

He seemed to light up as he talked about this, and Lizzy thought it sounded quite interesting, so they talked for the next hour about different areas where WPD might invest, and how developing these areas might make the world a better place.

At eleven, Lizzy needed to go back to the office. She insisted on paying for the check, although he put up a respectable fight. This time she didn't jump out of her chair and run out the door, and so he walked her out to the nearest main street to find a cab. They stood on the corner, not quite ready to say good night.

"Thanks for dinner. I really enjoyed it," he said.

"Me, too. It was really refreshing to talk to someone about something besides intellectual property law and baseball," she laughed.

"You don't like baseball? I thought you did," he said, puzzled.

"Actually, I do like baseball, a lot, but I end up talking about it way too much at work. It's the only non-work-related thing I have in common with most of the men in the office. I even joined the fantasy baseball league on my floor so there would be something I could talk about with the older married guys. Otherwise there were zero common points of interest." She tried to make a Venn diagram with her hands.

"Yankees or Mets?"

"Mets, of course. How could I be a Yankees fan? They are the definition of The Man, unlike my loveable loser Mets. How about you?" She was pretty sure she knew the answer to that one, but it didn't really bother her anymore.

"Yankees, of course," he smirked a little.

"Naturally." She grinned back.

"Um...would you like to do it again? Have dinner, I mean."

"Yeah, OK. Text me." She turned and waved at a cab that just then was nearing. It pulled to the curb.

He tentatively reached out and put his hand on her elbow, and leaned forward. At the last minute he suddenly changed direction, and kissed her cheek instead of her mouth, where he'd seemed to have been headed. _Peculiar_.

"OK, then, good night." And she hopped in the cab and was off. She turned on her phone and found 25 new work messages. Shit. It was going to be a long night.

* * *

The next day she took the late morning off to have brunch with Charlotte. They met at their favorite bagel shop, where they picked up some coffee, bagels, and schmear, and headed out to eat at a nearby park.

First they caught up on work issues, and then Lizzy asked Charlotte what she'd heard from Artemis. Nothing much was new, Charlotte said, just the usual stuff. Her father's company, Lucas Safe & Lock, was still struggling, but getting by. The college and the town were in the midst of a big conflict over how the town police had used pepper spray to break up a frat party, and some more family businesses downtown had closed. Her younger sister, Mariah, was starting her first year at Amherst College.

Finally, balancing her bagel on her lap, Lizzy said, "So Charlotte, I have a dating question for you."

"Oh! Did you take my advice and go out with Will Darcy?!" Charlotte was practically salivating in her eagerness to know.

"Yes, I did."

"Aha! And what's your question?"

"Well, like we said, it's been a couple of years since I dated, and I feel like my guy radar is just off." Charlotte nodded her understanding.

Lizzy told Charlotte about their dinners, and about the state of confusion they left her in.

"Well, except for the fact that he's a Fitzwilliam cousin, it sounds like pretty normal dating stuff to me. What's the problem?" Charlotte sipped her coffee.

"I'm not sure about some key things here. Point number one, does he actually like me? I'm getting very mixed signals. First he said he didn't like my type, but now he says he does find me attractive. He keeps asking me out, but then he doesn't kiss me."

"OK, that does sound like he's a little ambivalent. Maybe he's still working things out for himself. But what about you? Do you like him?"

"And that's point number two. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. He can be a real prick, obviously, but other times he's actually kind of charming and even a little awkward when he's out of his comfort zone," Lizzy said.

"We've had some good conversations-he's smart and has had some interesting life experiences. But then there's the fact that he's this pillar of corporate America. I'm just not sure if that's a dealbreaker for me or not." Lizzy finished off the last bite of her bagel.

"Says the woman who makes her living defending the worst of corporate America," Charlotte laughed at her.

"I know, I know. The point is I'm trying to get away from all of that, not get deeper into it..."

"So, are you ready to walk away? That sounds like a lot of ambivalence from both of you, for a lot of different reasons."

"Well...sometimes I think I see something more in him, but then, poof, it's gone, so I'm just not sure."

As usual, Charlotte cut right through Lizzy's bullshit. "Lizzy, it sounds to me like you are seriously overthinking this. He is very hot, and you want a piece of that, and that's why you are still hanging around. Does that sound about right?"

"NO!" Lizzy snapped, crumpling up the bagel bag and missing the trash can with it. She got up from the bench and this time managed to get the bag into the can. "Well, maybe. OK, yes, a little bit." She plopped back down on the bench.

"Look, you more or less said you wished he had kissed you. And, Lizzy, two years is a long, long drought."

Lizzy drummed her fingers on the bench. Charlotte was always very practical about these things. Was it worth another go before she pulled the plug?

"So what are you suggesting?" she finally asked Charlotte.

"Maybe you could give it a try, plant one on him, see if there is some chemistry."

"All right, OK. Maybe. I'll see what happens next time, if there is a next time."

"And who knows, you might even get some," Charlotte said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

Lizzy laughed. "Yeah, and it's about time, too. All work and no play makes Lizzy a dull girl. So tell me about _your _love life, Charlotte."

Charlotte was, of course, game. "So I met this guy named Liam Collins at a party..."

* * *

To her surprise after the non-kiss, Will did text Lizzy, and this time they went out to a Latin American-Japanese fusion restaurant to see what that was all about.

Over sushi and ceviche in what turned out to be a very chi-chi restaurant, all purple neon and high ceilings and dark corners, he talked some more about new directions he was thinking about for WPD, and she talked about how she was starting to think concretely about finding a new job once she was in a position to resign from DeWitt.

"Oh, that death penalty position you mentioned once?" he asked, stabbing a hunk of ceviche with a toothpick.

"You remember that? Well, I'm not sure if I'm going to go in that direction, but I'm going to start asking around, I think." She took a bit. "Wow, this is great."

"And you'd be happier with that?"

"Oh, yeah. But I might also look into what's going on at some of the human rights or environmental law firms. Then I could directly deal with cases where the fat cats game the system and beat up on the little guy. No offense, fat cat." She grinned at him and stabbed another piece of ceviche.

"None taken." He said this with a straight face, but she thought she caught a little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

As they finished up their meal around 11:00, he paid the bill since it was his turn. While Will was signing the credit card slip, Lizzy checked her phone, which she'd turned off during dinner. Her inbox was jammed with messages, all flagged "High Urgency," and with "For IMMEDIATE review" in the subject line. Crap.

Will and Lizzy headed outside and stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, Latin music spilling out toward them whenever the door opened. He hesitated a bit before asking, "Um...my place is near here. Would you like to come back for a drink or something?"

"Oh, I wish I could, but I have a bunch of documents to review and partners waiting for answers. I have to take care of this tonight."

"Elizabeth...is this some kind of bargaining position?"

"What?" she laughed. "Like The Rules or something?(1) I'm not playing hard to get, Will. I really do have to go back to work." She pulled out her phone and held it out so he could take a look if he wanted. But he waved it off, to indicate that he believed her..

He cleared his throat and just came out with it. "OK, if we're putting our cards on the table, do you want to keep getting together?"

"Oh." She paused. "I guess I have some questions for you, too. Like what exactly are you looking for here? I can never tell if you think this" she gestured between them "is a good idea or not."

"Well, it's complicated. My life is complicated."

This was never a good sign, in her experience. Something awful, some big reveal, was coming. "Maybe we shouldn't talk about this on the street. Is there somewhere around here where we could go to talk, just for a little while? Somewhere quiet?"

"Like I said, my place is right near here."

"Where?"

"72nd and Fifth."

"Oh." It couldn't be a snootier address. "OK, but I can't stay long."

They walked the few blocks to his place, which turned out to be a flat in a big Italianate building she'd heard of before, with lots of celebrity residents and a view of Central Park. She'd seen plenty of fancy apartments like that at parties thrown by the partners at her firm. The only difference was that this one had family photos of people she'd seen on TV hung on the walls in the long, glittering, marble hallway.

He ushered her into the big living room overlooking the Park. Probably it was very impressive, but she didn't know or care about interior design, so mostly she just noticed it was white, white, white, with a high ceiling and a big, ornate fireplace on one wall. From the kitchen he offered her a drink while she sat on one of the sofas and made a short phone call to the office. After a minute he came back in with a couple of glasses of white wine and put them on the coffee table in front of her. He sat next to her on the sofa, but not too close.

God, here we go, she thought. He picked up his wineglass and twirled it by the stem a little.

He looked very solemn when he said, "I really like you, but I...I guess the best way to put it is that I shouldn't be getting into anything too serious right now."

Lizzy laughed and said "whew" as she swept her hand across her forehead. "Oh, is that all? I don't have time for anything serious right now, myself."

"Really? I wouldn't want you to, I don't know, get your hopes up or that kind of thing." My, he was earnest.

"Oh, get over yourself, Darcy. And as you well know, I work a lot of hours. How the hell would I have time for a real relationship?"

"Hey, I understand. Me, too."

They sat silently for a minute. She wondered, did she need to say anything more explicit about how she didn't see any long-term prospects here? It seemed like they had just about covered it. _She _hadn't forgotten about that conversation at Netherfield, when he'd said he needed and wanted a stay-at-home wife. But had he? Maybe it would be OK to leave it like this. If they did open that can of worms, she might end up saying things that she would regret, or that would hurt his feelings. And why have that serious conversation if they were not getting serious? She still did wonder whether there was some other reason he was so reluctant to get involved, especially since it seemed like maybe he was shopping for a wife to do all his entertaining and so on.

She turned to him and asked gently, "So, can you tell me any more about this 'complicated' stuff in your life?"

"Well, what do you want to know? Although you could probably find out just about everything about me, and my whole family for that matter, on the Internet without too much effort." He sat back as he said this with some bitterness.

She reassured him, "I don't have time to play around on Google, and I'm sure most of what is out there is bullshit, anyway. Any jerk with a broadband connection or a BlackBerry can post anything at all on the Internet, whether it's true or not."

"Yes, and they do," he said grimly.

"I'm sorry. That must be terrible." She paused, "Actually, what I meant is, is there some other kind of complication I should know about? When a guy says that his life is 'complicated,' usually it means he already has a wife, or a girlfriend, or, you know, a serious mental illness, or a disease. Or a tail," she said, thinking of "Shallow Hal."

"No, nothing like that. I guess I meant the situation with my sister and all that." He nodded as he said this, as if she knew what he was talking about already.

She remembered what Charlotte had told her about this before, something about drugs and a girlfriend, she thought. "I'm sorry, I don't really remember. I think maybe I heard something about...well, I'm sure I won't get it right, so probably you should just tell me."

"You really don't know? It was in all the papers," he said, failing to hide his incredulity.

"No, I wasn't living in New York at the time," she replied. It seemed a little peculiar, and maybe a little self-centered, that he would assume everyone would know, and care, about this. On the other hand, it was clearly a very big deal to him. So she settled in for an explanation.

He shifted around on his seat a little, and she was surprised when he took off his loafers and put his stocking feet up on the coffee table, long legs stretched out in front of him. Somehow she hadn't expected that given the formality of their surroundings.

He cleared his throat and took a sip of wine. "Well...after our parents died, I became my sister's guardian. She was 16, still at Deerfield"-the exclusive boarding school, she remembered- "and she had started acting out. I was, what, 26?, and I didn't know how in hell to deal with a teenager on top of all the other stuff I had to take on at that time. Long story short, about three years ago she got into some trouble with drugs, all our names got dragged through the mud, and I spent the rest of the year trying to pick up the pieces."

"I'm really sorry to hear that. It sounds just awful. It's amazing that you kept going through all that." That was a lot of responsibility for someone so young, younger than she was now. She was pretty sure she wouldn't have been able to handle it-the business, the sister, and God knows what else that he wasn't telling her about.

"Yeah, thanks. I did my best, which, unfortunately wasn't always good enough." This was said with some regret.

"I'm sure you're being too hard on yourself. You're kind of a perfectionist, you know," she said warmly, poking him with her elbow, and then was startled to notice he was close enough to poke. She must have moved closer to him at some point.

"Comes with the territory, I guess." He stared out the window at the lights in the park for a moment. "Anyway, I don't really see any point in talking about exes and all that, but my, um, fiancee, I guess, at the time was involved in my sister's problems, and I found this so...distressing...that I haven't dated since."

Some kind of betrayal, then. She felt sad for him, but also admired him for apparently keeping himself together through it all. And, she could understand why he was wary of getting serious with anyone, too. Major trust issues, of course. She put her hand on his, lying on the seat between them.

"Wow. OK, I see what you mean by complicated. Thanks for telling me about it." Clearly it was a big deal for him to share something like this, even if he was still awfully, awfully reticent about it.

He squeezed her hand back and gave her a pinched smile. "Well...after that recital of woes, would you...do you want to see me again?"

She looked at his eyes, really looked into them, and for the first time she liked what she saw without question. At this moment, anyway, she saw just a man, a brother caring for a troubled sister, doing his best for his family, working hard, struggling and doing all he could in a difficult situation. These were things she could like and respect, and this was a person she could enjoy spending some time with. She couldn't help thinking there were some deeper emotions somewhere in those eyes, too, but this wasn't the time to go there. In a way, they had only just met, she felt.

So she squeezed his hand again. "Yeah, I would. Do you want to see me again after all my nosy questions?"

He chuckled. "If you think that was nosy, you must not have spent much time around reporters."

She smiled. "I am very happy to say that I have not. And I hope I never do. Oh, there won't be paparazzi lurking around the door when I leave, will there?"

He shook his head. "No, it's not like that. We don't have the name. They only show up when we really screw up, publicly. Then they're all over the place."

"All right, good to know." She looked at him again. She had a feeling it was now or never, and just as she opened her mouth to say something, he said it first.

"Can I kiss you, maybe?" he asked.

"Yes," she said very primly, laughing, smoothing her skirt, and crossing her ankles, "you may. And then I have to leave and go to work."

He leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. She found him to her taste, liked the flavor and feel of him, so she leaned in and kissed him back. Fifteen minutes later, she surfaced long enough to notice that she was stretched out on top of him on the sofa, with her hand up his shirt and her skirt hiked up just a little too high. So much for restraint, apparently. Also, so much for the question of whether that special something, that fizz, that _je ne sais quois_, was there between them. It was there, baby. She craned her head up to listen for the beeping noise coming from her bag on the floor.

"Shit. I forgot to turn my phone back off."

"Do you have to get it? It's probably midnight." He sounded a little strangled.

"I don't have to take it right this minute, but I do have to deal with it tonight. There's this maniac associate I'm working with who stays in the office all night. He's freaked out because some partner had a meltdown." She flopped back down on top of him. "It's too late to go back to the office, but I can deal with this from home if I can get to my laptop. I'm sorry. I really do have to go."

"It's OK. I know how it is." Neither of them moved.

They kissed a little more. Then she extracted herself carefully and got herself back in order. He sat up, and she laughed at how his hair was standing on end, even though she knew she probably wasn't looking much better herself.

"Honestly, officer, we were just looking at the moon," she joked.

"What?"

"I feel like we just got caught necking in the car."

"Oh." Evidently that had never happened to him.

"Anyway. Call me tomorrow?" she said, putting on her shoes.

"Oh, so we've graduated to speaking on the phone, now, have we?" he said with a crooked smile.

"Yes, on Sundays, anyway."

He walked her down to the street and they stood silent and close to each other, their arms just touching, while they waited for a passing cab to pull up. Obviously he wasn't into public displays of affection, so she just put her hand on his arm and kissed his cheek as she stepped into the car. Then she was gone, and he stood at the curb watching the cab go.

* * *

The following Saturday, they met at a ritzy Hong Kong Chinese place on the better edge of Chinatown, a place Will had suggested even though officially it was Lizzy's turn to choose. He'd been enthusing about it for a while so she thought they could give it a try.

He had, as usual, arrived first, and they fumbled around a little trying to figure out how to greet one another before settling on a European kiss-kiss-kiss on the cheeks. He advised her that most of the stuff on the menu was Chinese-American crap, but if you knew what to order you could get some excellent and authentic fresh seafood.

When the waiter came to their table, Will tried to order in Chinese from the Chinese-language menu, which had some delicacies that weren't on the English menu. But the waiter said, "Dude! I don't speak Chinese-I'm Cambodian!" It turned out he was a surfer guy from LA, looking for work as an actor in New York. So they had to order in English, anyway.

After the waiter took their order and left, Will looked at Lizzy with a sheepish little smile and said, "Well, that didn't quite work out the way I'd hoped."

Lizzy was a bit touched that he would try to impress her by showing off his language skills. He was Will Darcy, after all-he didn't need to impress anyone. Did he? So she smiled and said, "Hey, it's a Chinese restaurant with a Chinese menu. Of course you'd assume the people working here could read it if they put it out there."

After the food-a whole fish, little crabs, salt-and-pepper prawns-came, Will asked, "Did you know that the cheek is the most prized part of the fish in China?" He gallantly used his chopsticks to put it in her rice bowl.

"And why is that?"

"Because the muscle is rarely used and is therefore the most tender. Ask anyone."

"Oh, I believe you, smarty pants," she smiled, reaching for it. It _was _awfully tender. And the meal was fantastic, everything he'd promised it would be.

After they had finished their meal, she had paid the bill, and they had stood up to go, she said, "My place? We could grab something chocolate on the way there. It's not far."

They stopped briefly at a dessert place that had decent chocolate cakes and crème brûlée to go. They held hands discreetly as they walked to her place, and talked about countries where they each hoped to travel someday.

After they climbed the stairs to her apartment, she stood with her back to the bar separating the kitchen from the living room, holding the refrigerator open, and turned to him to ask, "What'll you have? I have...spoiled milk, very old orange juice, wine that's turned to vinegar, and sixteen kinds of herbal tea."

He smiled, leaning against the other side of the bar. "Hmm, given those very appealing choices, I think I'd like some herbal tea, please."

She put the kettle on and pawed through the boxes of tea. "Chamomile, sleepy time with chamomile, more chamomile, chamomile with raspberry...and more chamomile."

"Why all the chamomile?"

"Well-I don't like chamomile, so apparently I drink up everything else in the assortment boxes and leave the chamomile."

"Then I'll have some chamomile, please," he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up a bit in what she was beginning to see was his characteristic way.

She put the desserts out on the coffee table in the living room along with the mugs of tea. They sat on the beat-up microfiber sofa together, an easy choice because it and the table were the only pieces of furniture in the cramped room except for the bookcases. Those were crammed with books, big and small: art books, philosophy books, novels, travel guides, biographies, non-fiction, textbooks-all the things she loved to read but hadn't had time for during the last couple of years.

He looked around at the room, the white walls completely devoid of any color, art, or decoration. Instead of curtains, the window facing the street had only crooked venetian blinds, the neon lights from the shops across the street flashing between the slats. With a straight face, he said, "I really love what you've done with the place."

She laughed. "Isn't it swell? I spend every moment of my spare time on home decorating."

"It shows."

"Basically I just sleep here, you know. You should see my office, though. I actually have a poster on the wall and a flower vase there."

"Very nice." He nodded approvingly.

"Well, the flowers are dead. I guess that ruins the effect a little."

She cracked the caramelized sugar on top of the crème brûlée, which she'd chosen for herself at the dessert shop, by whacking it with her spoon. "Do you want to share? This is really good stuff."

"Yeah, sure. Please have some of my chocolate whatever this is, too." He nudged it toward her on the table.

She took a bite of it. "Wow, haven't had that before. Excellent."

He crunched on the caramelized sugar from her dessert. "Yeah, this is super, too. Creamy."

"I usually don't waste my calories on things that contain no chocolate, but I make an exception for that." She pointed at the crème brûlée with her spoon.

"I can see why."

It started to bug Lizzy that they were so studiously avoiding talking about the big, fat, hairy 800-pound gorilla in the room, which was, were they going to sleep together tonight? Obviously they were going to have to have That Very Uncomfortable Conversation, if so. But she wasn't exactly sure where or how to start, not with this guy. Shit. Shit. Suddenly she saw that she had eaten the rest of the crème brûlée without even noticing it. She glanced up and saw that he was looking at her curiously.

"What?" she asked.

"Are you OK?"

When she looked a little more closely at him, she saw that he looked a little nervous, too. She liked that-the Big Man had nerves. The knots in her stomach loosened a little. She reached over and put her hand on his, and smiled. "Yeah, I'm OK. You?"

He nodded. At the same time, they both leaned in for a kiss, and she was a goner. He was just as yummy as last time, and she wondered what had taken her so long to get started.

As she was pulling her blouse off over her head, she asked, "Tested?"

Unzipping her skirt, he answered, "Yes, negative. You?"

"Same." God, she just wanted to eat him right up.

"Condoms?" he asked after a moment, tearing his mouth away from her briefly as she unbuckled his belt.

"Bedroom," she managed to squeak out, walking him backwards down the hall in that direction, clothes flying.

As in their professional lives, she was highly energetic and creative, while he was thorough, careful, and steady, a detail man. She was very goal-oriented, but he paid great attention to process and to making sure that all the important points were touched upon methodically and completely. These complementary approaches made for excellent teamwork, and their joint efforts produced an impressive outcome all around.

Afterwards, tangled up with him in the sheets, she remarked, "Well, I think we have the chemistry thing covered."

"Yup."

"Not much of a talker, are you?" She elbowed him in the ribs.

"Nope."

"Jerk," she laughed at him. "Hey, wait, what's this?" She had spotted something interesting on his hip.

"I think you know what that is," he said a little smugly. It was a small black raven, the mark of the Final Club he'd belonged to at Harvard.

"Holy shit! I thought all that secret society stuff was made up! But you rich guys really do sit around in fancy clubs smoking cigars and tattooing each other while you plan how you're going to rule the world!" There had been a lot of rumors about this kind of thing when George W. Bush, who was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale(2), had been elected president. But nobody on the inside would say for sure.

He held up his hand as if taking an oath. "I swear to you I have never, ever smoked a cigar."

She smirked, "Nice non-denial denial, Darcy."

"So, do you have to go back to the office tonight?" he said, putting his hand on one of her more attractive attributes.

She laughed some more. "No, but if you want to stay over I _will _have to kick you out sometime before noon so I can get my case prepped for Monday."

"That's OK. I have an 11 o'clock tee time with a prospective investor tomorrow morning anyway."

"Golf! That's one of my big failings as a lawyer. I've never learned how to play."

"I'll teach you if you want."

"Oh, you'll show me how to swing a club, big guy?" she stuck out a hand to reach for him, but he grabbed her wrist just in time.

"Oh, no, you don't, missy."

She gave up without a fight, and looked at him more seriously. "So you'd like to stay?"

"Yes."

This time he moved fast, but she once again put her creativity to good use in testing his patience as long as possible. When they both finally gave in and let go rather noisily, the downstairs neighbor banged on his ceiling with a broomstick. They heard his muffled shout, "Hey, keep it down up there!"

Lizzy turned to Will, who was hiding his face under the pillow in mortification. She lifted up the pillow so she could see his eyes, and smiled sweetly, saying, "I'm sorry, sir, I'm trying, but it seems to have a mind of its own."

They laughed at that for a long time, while the neighbor banged on the ceiling until he got tired of it and turned up the volume of his TV really, really high. Through the floor they heard the words "To boldly go where no man has gone before!"(3)

* * *

After that, they saw each other on Saturday nights, and also on the occasional Wednesday. On Fridays, they both worked really late so that they wouldn't feel too guilty about turning off their phones on Saturday nights. Sometimes they stayed at his place, and sometimes at hers. He never scheduled any Sunday tee times before 2 pm. They agreed to exclusivity, agreeing that it was a good idea on principle, and, anyway, neither of them had time to see anyone else.

They always met at some kind of adventurous restaurant, taking turns choosing and paying, and testing the other's limits with regard to spiciness, unusual tastes, and overall weirdness. They had long, rambling discussions about travel, work, philosophy, and politics while they sampled shabu-shabu, or lamb with couscous, or huge swords of meat at a Brazilian churrasco place. When they were out, he was affectionate but reserved. He seemed to like watching her wax enthusiastic about her passions, and she enjoyed seeing him light up about strange or interesting things he'd read about or come across at work. She found his wry sense of humor very amusing. And the sex was great, too, messy and noisy and often acrobatic, a rip-roaring good time. Lizzy hadn't had so much fun in a long, long time.

But there were certain things that made her glad she already knew this wouldn't go anywhere in the end.

Even though she told funny stories about her family's foibles, he never, ever talked about his family after that first conversation when he'd hinted a little about his sister's troubles. Lizzy thought this was weird, and under different circumstances, she would have asked him more questions, especially after his hints about a domineering father, was it? She wasn't sure whether he thought she already knew all there was to know about his family, or whether he had more secrets, or whether he just didn't like to talk about it. Every now and then his sister would call, and he would speak to her gently and quietly as he took the phone off into another room. After he'd hung up, he would come back into the room and make a point of talking about something else. He also never introduced Lizzy to any of the cousins or other relations, and never asked her to a work-related event. She didn't get the sense that this was because he was ashamed of her, but rather because he was private. It was hard to tell, though.

And, to be fair, she never asked him to her work events, and never introduced him to her friends, either. Since there wasn't any future for them, it seemed kind of pointless. And she figured that that was probably why he was acting this way, too. Their relationship was not a secret, exactly, but it wasn't something to go public with, either.

And he had certain attitudes, and certain assumptions, that kind of pissed her off and that she wouldn't have let pass if things between them had been different. Like when he was dismissive of the waitstaff, or when he mentioned a famous person he knew, or when he dropped a casual mention of some outrageously expensive thing he'd bought or a trip he'd been on, without even seeming to acknowledge that this wasn't normal for most people.

One moment that really stuck in her craw was the evening when they decided to have takeout at his place instead of eating in a restaurant. It was good Sichuan food, served family-style of course, and instead of eating it straight out of the containers they had opted to be slightly more civilized and to eat from bowls. After they'd eaten, she picked up their bowls and glasses and carried them into the kitchen. He followed her in, just watching. She ran some water into the bowls, getting ready to put them in the dishwasher.

Offhandedly he said, "Oh, you don't need to do that. Just leave them. Someone will take care of that," and he turned to leave.

"What do you mean, 'someone'? The housework elves?" she asked, laughing at his privilege and entitlement and cluelessness.

"What? No, someone comes in a few times a week to clean up. The building has maid service. They'll do it. Come on. I want to show you that great book of old photos from China that I told you about." He nodded his head to show her the way to his office.

She went, but she wondered. Had he actually never washed a dish in his whole life? Did he not know the name of the people who so beautifully cleaned his house, or when they did it? Was he just too busy and important for this kind of thing? This assumption that other people would just take care of this "trivial" stuff for him really rankled. She didn't know if he was this way because he was a man, or because he was rich, but either way it really bugged her. Adults should know how to take care of themselves, she thought. Well, at least he didn't expect _her _to do the dishes, either.

Occasionally they had peculiar conversations where she felt like they were talking right past each other.

One evening over dinner she mentioned that she was getting pretty worn out from all these 100-hour weeks. That would be another good thing, she said, about leaving DeWitt. "It would be great to find a place with less emphasis on billable hours, and more on just getting the work done. I haven't even had time to read a book for fun in a couple of years! I'd like to have a little more personal time, maybe do some photography again, or take a trip now and then." Cutting down to 60 or 70 hours a week would be a little more humane, she thought to herself.

"Yeah, I understand," he said. It looked to her like he thought her last statement had some kind of deeper meaning than she had intended. She wasn't sure what to do with that, so she changed the subject.

Right before Halloween, she made a joke about hosting a party at her apartment, which was barely big enough to hold the two of them, and he nodded knowingly.

"Would you like to have parties if you had more space?" he asked.

She laughed. "I don't have time to have parties while I'm working this much, silly." He looked confused, but she didn't pursue it.

When she occasionally complained about obnoxious things her co-workers did and said she wished she could get out of there, he nodded his head, looking like he was storing this fact away, for what purpose, she couldn't tell.

Once in late October, Jane called Lizzy and invited her to go out for dinner with her and Charlie. And, oh, they were going to invite Will, too. Lizzy felt guilty she hadn't told Jane that she and Will were seeing each other, and she was really tempted to say something. But she didn't.

Will and Lizzy arrived separately at the restaurant because they were both coming from work. Will arrived first, and as Lizzy walked up to the table, she heard Charlie say, "So, Will, what's new? Seeing anyone these days?"

Will opened his mouth to answer, but then Jane saw Lizzy, and the crisis was averted as the two of them hugged and chattered away.

At the end of the evening, Lizzy and Will left together on the pretext that they were sharing a cab back to Midtown. Of course they actually went to Will's place and bonked for a couple of hours, excited by the cloak-and-dagger act.

Yes, they were having a great time, within certain parameters that were OK with Lizzy. They each did their own thing, no commitment, no getting too personal. On the whole, it was a good thing, a very good, enjoyable thing, from Lizzy's point of view. She just hoped that nothing would happen to upset this balance for a while.

_Footnotes:_  
(1) _The Rules _was a book that came out in 1995, urging women to play hard to get in order to attract a man. I don't know if anybody still reads this stuff, but it was a hot topic in the late 90s and into the early 2000s.

(2) Skull and Bones society: this is a real men's senior secret society at Yale University. Some important American cultural and political figures have been members, including President George W. Bush, President George H. W. Bush, Senator John Kerry, the author William F. Buckley, and the historian David McCullough.

(3) "To boldly go where no man has gone before!": I don't really need to explain that, right? It's the tagline from Star Trek, the original series. Later it was changed to "to boldly go where no one has gone before."


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Oh, you know what's coming, so I won't even say it. As always, many, many thanks to my betas. Thanks to Jan for suffering through multiple icky iterations of this chapter before she finally got it to make sense, and to Barbara for coming up with the big plot twist tying it all together._

**Chapter 7**

early November 2006

One Saturday evening in early November, Lizzy was in her office and just packing up her stuff-briefcase, overnight bag, and laptop-to head to Will's place when her boss emailed her a document that had to be revised RIGHT NOW. Shit! God, this was the last thing she needed after a long and trying week. Things had gone badly in a pro bono case, and her client was going to be deported. One of the other junior associates on a major case they were working on had really fucked up and sent some documents he shouldn't have over to the opposition, resulting in the senior partner tearing him a new one and leaving the rest of the associates to pick up the pieces. The list went on. All she wanted was to get something to eat and then put it all out of her mind with a good romp in bed.

So, she called Will and told him she'd be late. Then she put her head down and got the thing done, but it wasn't until 10:30 or so that she finally was able to shut down her computer and head Uptown.

When she got to Will's place, she gave him a quick peck as he held the door for her to come in. She dumped her stuff in the foyer, and they headed into the breakfast nook attached to the kitchen. He'd been doing some kind of paperwork, and shoved it aside to make room for the foam container holding her chicken kebab salad and pita bread.

"Ugh," she said as she ate, "Shitty week."

"Sorry to hear that." He asked her for the rundown, and she went down the list.

In return, she asked him about his week.

"Did I tell you?" he asked, "I had to go down to Atlanta for a couple of days to resolve some issues in a company we just acquired." As it turned out, she hadn't known about that. Was that weird, she wondered, that he had left town for days without telling her? Well, maybe not, since she wouldn't say they were in a real relationship, exactly.

Energy restored by her meal, Lizzy sat up straight, took a deep breath, and got a good look at Will, the first really good one since she'd come in the door. He looked yummy, all tousled and weekend-casual, and he was in a good mood. Sometimes it could be hard to tell when he was, but she knew the signs now-the little twitch of the lips, the slightly raised eyebrows, the drumming fingers.

She smiled at him. "You seem cheery tonight. What do you say, do you want to...?" she nodded in the general direction of the bedroom. That's how they always said it, never "make love" or even "have sex."

He agreed with some enthusiasm, so she dumped her takeout containers in the trash and they raced down the hall together, dropping their clothes as they went.

She happily turned off her brain and let herself enjoy the sensations, his touch, the physical closeness, the mutuality. They were well matched here, at least. Tonight she was energetic and unfocused, taking the more strenuous and athletic route, but he was very persistent, keeping her in the moment, treading with her upward on the path toward their mutual goal, observing and adapting until the final catch of breath and tumbling fall.

Afterwards, she lay exhausted, boneless, relaxed, blissful. Mellow. Will rolled over and held her while she lay on her back. He stroked her belly.

He looked at her profile and the satisfied smile on her lips, and out of nowhere he said in a low voice, still a little out of breath, "You know, I think I love you."

Startled but too sluggish to react much, she turned her head to look at him with a touch of incredulity. "What?" This was not something she had expected to hear him say.

He nodded. "Yeah, I think I do. I'm just as surprised as you."

She relaxed back into the pillows. "Hmm...well, anyway, it's probably just the afterglow. It'll pass. Thanks, though. You're a nice person, a nice man."

He pushed himself up onto his elbow, and reached over with his top hand to take hers. "No, really. Don't you think we have something here?" He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it.

"Will..." Hadn't they settled all of this long ago, when they'd established the terms of their whatever it was, liaison? This wasn't going in a good direction.

But he continued. "I know it's unexpected. I _never _expected to feel this way about someone like you. But I think we could be good together."

This irked her. She could see he was laying his heart on the line, opening himself up to being hurt, and she didn't _want _to hurt him, because he _was _a nice man. But did he not see how insulting his words were? She exhaled hard to help keep calm, and then, looking up at the ceiling said, "When you say 'someone like me,' what do you mean, exactly?"

"You know, a smart, driven, hard-working, ambitious woman. That just hasn't been my thing."

She chuckled, just a little sourly. "I'm flattered, I guess, but you know that makes it sound like you actually have a thing for stupid, unmotivated women with no goals in life."

He looked appalled. "What? No, of course not. That's not what I meant. I meant, I figured I'd end up with a woman kind of like my mother. She was a homemaker, and she took care of my dad and me and Georgie, and supported my dad in his career. That's what a man in my position needs."

She almost laughed out loud at this as she sat up and pulled the sheet up over her chest. _A man in his position?_ Jesus, and people said that social class didn't exist in America. But this wasn't the point. Focus, focus. How could she talk him out of this madness without hurting his feelings, get him to come to the conclusion on his own that this was ridiculous? "So, um, I don't quite understand how I fit into your vision, here."

He sat up, too, and put on his best business negotiation face. "I don't know why you're fighting it-I think we both know you feel the same way about me, too." At this she took in a breath sharply to speak, to call him on his presumptuousness, but he kept on going.

"Look at it objectively. It's a win-win situation. One, how many times have you told me that you're only working this hard because you need the money? Problem solved-money is no longer an issue. Two, you're always saying how much you hate your job, and how you'd like to work less. So, you can quit your job and do whatever you want. Three, you could help me by taking care of all the social stuff that's part of my position, parties and dinners and that kind of thing to recruit investors for WPD." He was really on a roll now. His eyes were sparkling and he was gesturing animatedly.

"Four, I know how much doing good is important to you. You could get involved in the family foundation. That's something I haven't been able to give as much attention as I'd like." He paused, "And, five, of course you could raise our kids." He smiled. It seemed to Lizzy that he didn't notice he'd lost the thread of his argument as he'd wandered off into La-La Land there at the end.

"Will, I'm not...this is not..."

He interrupted, "Don't you see the benefits for both of us in this?"

Well, she could certainly see the benefits for him. It was really pissing her off that not only did he not know she wasn't interested in leading that kind of life, but that he was trying to convince her that _he _knew better than she did what _she _wanted in life. He wasn't going to let her let him down easy. Shit. She needed to clear her head and come up with some kind of exit strategy. That wasn't going to happen here in bed.

She pushed down the covers and made to get up. Tightly, she said, "You know what, I'm thirsty. I'm going to go get a glass of water. I'll be right back." She grabbed the first item of clothing she came across, his blue button-down shirt. She didn't do her best thinking naked, so she pulled it on as she crossed the room, leaving him open-mouthed, mid-argument.

She stalked into the kitchen, found the cupboard full of glasses, and filled a glass with water from the dispenser on the outside of the refrigerator. There was no place to sit down in this damn huge, shiny black-and-stainless kitchen, so she headed toward the breakfast nook where they'd sat to eat dinner, and perched on the edge of a chair while she tried to organize her thoughts.

And that's where she saw the pile of papers that Will had been working on. She knew how to read business documents, and these were documents setting out the details of WPD's takeover of Lucas Safe & Lock. The purchase itself was complete. These were the papers laying out how they were going to tear the place apart now that they owned it. Fuck! Fuck. She slammed her glass down on the table and ran for her BlackBerry to find out just how the fuck long this had been going on. She stood, aghast, in the foyer by her bags as a Google search revealed the terrible details.

The _Wall Street Journal_ reported that after several months of negotiations, WPD had bought the firm from Charlotte's father, mostly on credit. The firm would have to pay back all those loans itself, meaning it had to turn a profit, fast. WPD had already announced that there would be a major restructuring. More than half of the management positions were going to go. Worse still, all but a few of the manufacturing jobs were going to be shipped overseas to China, where they could do the work more cheaply. The only jobs that would still be left in Artemis were some of the specialized, higher-tech safe lock mechanisms, which required particular technical skills and couldn't be made yet in China.

This was devastating news for Artemis. It would spell the end of its long history of manufacturing, and it would leave the town and surrounding areas without more than two hundred jobs that kept thousands of people above water. In the region there was already a lot of rural poverty-lots of people living in trailers in the middle of nowhere, living hand to mouth. After this, the food pantries and homeless shelters would be swamped. Foreclosures, repossessions, the whole lot, were coming their way.

Oh, God. She had of course always known that this was what Will did for a living, but this brought it home to her more personally than before. How could he do this to her, to her hometown? And, how could he not have told her? How could Charlotte not have told her, either? Charlotte had been saying for ages that the company was struggling, but she'd never hinted that things were this bad. Apparently WPD-Will?-thought it still had some kind of potential. Or at least he saw the potential to make some money out of it. Had WPD forced Mr. Lucas into the sale in some kind of hostile takeover? Oh, this was bad.

And worse, this was the life, the business, that he wanted her to give up everything up for? No fucking way. No more Ms. Nice Guy. The gloves were off.

Eyes flashing, big shirt and hair streaming behind her, she stormed back into the bedroom, where Will was still sitting up in bed looking cross. She practically threw herself onto the bed and sat cross-legged next to him, shoving the shirttails down to cover her nakedness.

"OK," she spat out, waving her hand in the air, "you asked me if I could see the benefits for both of us in the life you were talking about. The answer is, no, I can't. You would want me to support you and your career, and help you succeed. Oh, and raise your children and be the Little Mother. And basically be invisible and have no identity of my own except as your wife and the mother of your children. Is that about it?" She had been mad earlier, but just saying this out loud made her furious. Had he not been listening to her at all when she'd talked about how much her work meant to her? Did he really think that she was just keeping herself busy until she could catch a man and move on to her true calling, being Suzy Homemaker?

He squinted at her in disbelief. "No, of course not! Don't you understand? I can't do what I have to do without a wife to do all this stuff." He said this as if it were totally, totally self-evident.

"Oh my God. Did you really just say that? Basically, you've decided you love me, and that means that I therefore have to do whatever you want. You are so goddamned entitled."

A little querulously, he asked, "What are you talking about? Didn't we just go over how this would be good for you, and give you what you wanted?"

She was so furious she couldn't even yell. Firmly and icily, she said, "No! You _never _asked me what I wanted, you just inferred what I wanted from some random collection of words that made their way into your ears. What you are talking about would _not _be good for me, Will. Because, as you would know if you had actually been listening to me for the last three months, this is the exact opposite of what I want. I _live _for work, for my job. That's who I am, it's what I do. It's what gives my life meaning. The last thing in the world I would _ever _want to do is to give up my job. I wouldn't even know who I was anymore if I did that."

Now Will began to look resentful. He huffed, "I thought you'd be more appreciative of the kind of life I could give you. Most women would."

Lizzy rolled her eyes. In a sarcastic voice, she bit out, "Do you hear how totally self-centered you are? This is all about you, and what _you _want, and what _you _need, and how _you _think you love me. You haven't once asked me how I feel about you, or what I want my life to be like. Or what's really important to me."

"OK, do you love me? And what do you want, and what's important to you?" he raised his voice, sitting up straighter, looking thunderous.

She hadn't wanted to come out and say this, but he'd left her no alternative. Coldly, she said, "Well, thanks so much for asking. We started this thing between us with the understanding that we were not getting serious, that your life was 'complicated,' and that I didn't have time for a real relationship. So you can imagine how surprised I am to hear that all of that is out the window. No, I _don't _love you. I don't care about the money, and I don't want to give up my identity, and throw away my education and all the hard work I have put in for the last five years so _you _can have your brilliant career. Do you even _know _what I'm working for in my career? What path I'm on?"

"Yeah, sure," he snapped. "You always say you want to help the little guy. So, what, you want to, um, fight the good fight by working for a little law firm somewhere. A David and Goliath thing, right? I don't really see why giving that up is such a big thing, considering what you'd get in return."

He really hadn't been listening. He didn't have a clue. That made her even madder, and finally she blew.

"No. No! I was top in my class at Yale Law School, editor of the Law Journal. I clerked at the Supreme Court. I'm at a Top Ten law firm, Top Ten in the country. I don't know where this is going and how I'm going to get there, exactly, or if I'll be lucky enough or smart enough or want it enough, but this is the path that can get you to a place like chief legal counsel at Amnesty International, or White House Counsel. Or Supreme Court Justice. Or something like that. And _that _is how you help the little guy most, where it can make a difference for everyone. And _that _is why I am not going to quit my fucking job so I can serve fucking canapés to your investors."

"Well, I'm sorry I asked..."

"Yeah, me, too. And if you'd paid even the slightest attention to who I actually am, and what I value, and why it is that I work this hard, instead of imagining I was some fantasy Barbie doll plaything, you _wouldn't _have asked. But anyway, even if I didn't feel that way, you know how I feel about WPD. In what conceivable world would I give up my dreams to support a company that would destroy my town? How could you do this to Artemis?"

"Do what?" He looked bewildered

"Don't you know? Lucas Safe & Lock is the only thing standing between Artemis and total economic collapse. I saw the papers you left on the table, and I read the reports about the deal in the _Journal_. You're closing the place down. Hundreds of people, some of them people I know who are already living on the edge, are going to be destroyed. Families with kids, people struggling to take care of their parents. How could you do this to them? How could you do this to people I care about and not even have the courtesy to tell me?"

"That's what you think of what I do? You think I'm that kind of person? Do you also think I knock down babies and steal their candy?"

"I don't think you're a bad person. I wouldn't have been here with you all this time if I did. But I think your company does bad things, yes. And I am sure as hell not giving up everything I believe in in the service of _that_." By this time she was up on her knees, waving her hands around wildly. Now she stilled and sat back on her heels.

They sat for a full minute without saying anything, both staring down at the bed.

Lizzy looked up and spoke first because she couldn't stand the silence. "OK, then, I guess we're through here." She got off the bed and walked across the room, picking up her clothes from the floor as she went. She went into the bathroom, yanked off his shirt and threw it on the floor, and pulled on her underwear, jeans and top. She jammed her bra in her pocket and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed and her eyes were watery. She hadn't even realized she was so close to crying.

She splashed some water on her face, and pulled her hair up in an elastic she found lying on the counter. She looked around the bathroom and realized that that was the entirety of the belongings she had at Will's place. No underwear in a dresser drawer, no toothbrush in the bathroom, no key to complicate things...that was it. And it made it really, really easy to walk away.

She pulled herself up straight and walked back into the bedroom, where Will was still sitting up in bed.

"See you around, I guess," she said.

"That's it?" he asked angrily.

"Well, isn't it? You've just told me that you really don't like women like me, and that you want me to change myself completely so I can be what you need. Fuck that. I don't need you or anyone else to judge me that way. Go find yourself a nice society wife. You're a real catch, so I'm sure there are a million women who'd jump at the chance. I'm just not one of them."

She left him still sitting there wrapped in the sheets, and she made sure to slam the front door on the way out.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: Oh, dear. Some remorse and regret may be coming our way. After a while, anyway. Thanks as always to my fantastic betas, Jan and Barbara, who always poke and prod about all the right things._

**Chapter 8**

early November 2006

The next day, Sunday, Lizzy was supposed to have brunch with Charlotte, but she canceled and spent the morning at home at her computer instead. Sure, she was upset, and more than a little mad, both at Will and at Charlotte for not telling her about the buyout. But she also had a bunch of research to do, and cases to read, so she threw herself into work and just shut out the rest of it. And she worked extra hard and extra long all week to keep it shut out.

Still, somewhere deep in the recesses of her mind, her thoughts were churning. What the hell was wrong with that man? They'd agreed they weren't going to get serious, and now suddenly he was in love with her? _Was _being the operative word, probably. Who the hell did he think he was, asking her to quit her job so she could fit neatly into his life? Fuck that. To hell with him and his crappy company.

At 1:15 Friday morning, just as she was getting ready to shut down her computer and head home for a few hours of sleep, her inbox dinged. The little window in the corner popped up, showing her the message was from Will. Oh, shit. She almost erased it without reading it, the cursor hovering over the little delete button. But it was in her nature to be curious, so she opened it.

_Elizabeth,_

_Please don't worry, there are no more unwanted professions of love in this message. I just couldn't let things go without trying to explain myself to you. I was really angry at first but I think I have calmed down enough now to write about this rationally._

_I think you know a little bit about the problems with my sister, Georgiana. To put it baldly, she is a heroin addict, and she abuses cocaine, and meth, and she will snort, shoot, smoke, or drink just about anything she can get her hands on. She is 23 years old and she has never, or maybe I should say has not so far, done anything truly meaningful with her life. In part, I blame myself for this, even though I have done everything I could think of to get her straightened out since I became her guardian six years ago. She has been in rehab both voluntarily and involuntarily, in therapy, and even in jail, but I am convinced that unless she somehow pulls herself together she is going to end up dead on the street with a needle in her arm. Before she turned 21, I at least had control over her trust fund, but now there is really nothing I can do to check her behavior. For the last two years she only sought me out when she needed money after she'd burned through the allowance from her trust fund. I always gave it to her because I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't bring myself to cut my baby sister off, even though I knew she would just spend the money on drugs. When you and I first met, the counselors and lawyers had finally convinced me that it had to stop, and for the first time I said no when she asked. It was the hardest thing I have ever done._

_You might ask yourself why I am telling you this, and why I feel responsible for any of it. With regard to the first, it's because of something you said that night. You said that your work gives your life meaning. I know that not all kinds of work do give people a sense of meaning. A lot of people find meaning in their families, or in religion, or their favorite sports team, and lots of other things. But like most men, my work, at WPD and to a certain extent at the foundation, is what gives my life most of its meaning. So you are right, I should have understood that it was that way for you, too. But the relevant point here is that Georgie has never worked, has never had to work for anything, or really had to do anything except for have a good time. My dad never drilled it into her that she would be taking over the family business, or the foundation, or really doing anything at all, maybe because she was the baby, and maybe because she was a girl. And neither did I. The result is that she has never had any purpose. And she has never had to make any hard decisions about what she wants to do, how to build a career, how to be responsible for things and responsible to other people. In other words, she has never learned how to be a grownup. Instead, she has spent her time hanging around with our worthless cousins and their celebrity friends and their goddamn entourages, and totally pissed her life away._

_Three years ago, I discovered all this when she OD'd at a party held at the house of a woman I was then engaged to. That woman, who had been a boarding school classmate of my cousin's, was, unbeknownst to me, a casual cocaine user. If that's possible, to be a casual user. As I found out later, her supplier was one of the hangers-on, a guy named George Wickham. He was at the party, he knew Georgie, and he sold her a huge amount of cocaine and helped her freebase it in a back bedroom, while I was having cocktails with my smiling cousins and their sycophantic, parasitic friends in the living room. Someone else found her passed out in the bedroom, and the EMTs revived her and rushed her to the hospital. It was all over the tabloids, and it was really, really ugly, with all kinds of hints that I was part of that crowd and was using drugs, too. I didn't care about that because I was trying to get Georgie straightened out, get myself and her away from that crowd. I haven't spoken to my cousins or attended any family functions since then._

_I am so angry with myself for letting this happen to her. She is smart and beautiful, and she could have been a person of substance. But because she has no purpose, this is what she has become. I don't even know where she is right now, and I probably won't know until she needs more money. And then I'll just have to turn her down, and let her go, again._

_I hadn't really thought about these things in quite this way until the other night. But you are right. We all need a purpose in life, and yours is the law. I should never have asked you, never even thought to ask you, to give that up for me or anybody, or anything, else. I'm sorry. I know you probably think I'm the worst kind of sexist pig, but I assure you I'm not, really. I merely described to you the life that the people in my world, OK, in my class, expect to lead. That's the life we all expected for Georgiana, and look how that turned out. Clearly I need to think about all of this some more. Maybe a lot more._

_There's one other thing I wanted to say. I know it's putting it mildly to say that you don't think very highly of WPD and what I do for a living. I have some concerns about it myself. But I am doing my very best with the hand I was dealt, and the fact is that when I was 26 years old and fresh out of business school, my father died and left me this enormous company. I have tried my hardest to keep the organization going, not to let the investors down, and to make sure my employees have successful, sustainable careers. Running a private equity firm, being a "corporate raider" as you would call it, is probably not what I would have chosen to do if it was all up to me. But it's not all up to me. It's not my place to consider the effects of what we do. It's my job to keep the organization going. I wish that my company's actions had not hurt your town and the people you love, but that's not my primary responsibility, and so I don't apologize for doing the right thing for my own people._

_I know your hard work is going to pay off, and you're going to make the world a better place. I wish you the brilliant career that you desire and richly deserve._

_WD_

Lizzy read it over and over. She still felt angry, and maybe even madder than before because of that last part where he said he wasn't sorry for destroying Artemis. But she also felt incredibly sad for him. She couldn't believe that he had opened himself up to her this way, especially since it would have been so easy for her to hit "forward" and send it to the _Post _or the _National Enquirer_ or whoever would offer her the most money for it. She had had no idea that he felt things so deeply. She didn't know if that was because he _never _talked about them, or because she had never asked. And that made her feel awful because she had not, apparently, taken the time to know him, in spite of all the hours they had spent in each other's company. His poor sister. Poor Will, to have all of this play out in the public eye.

She almost picked up her phone to call him, but she couldn't bring herself to press send. It was the middle of the night. Her feelings were still too raw, and she was still too mad about the Safe & Lock buyout. She wasn't sure what she would say. She also had the sneaking suspicion that maybe she hadn't been totally right about everything she'd said that night, although she needed to think about that for a while to be sure. And, besides, his sign-off, while awfully charitable, didn't exactly invite a reply. So she put the phone away, logged out of her email, and went home, where she tossed and turned all night.

* * *

She felt mixed up in the days after that. At first she thought that she was just missing the company, the warm body, the almost-but-not-quite boyfriend that he'd been. But it wasn't that. It also wasn't the opulent apartment and the Land Rover and the wonderful meals-none of that really mattered to her. And it was not just his beauty and the physical side of things, which had been great. It turned out there were many other wonderful things about him that she really missed. There was the kind way he spoke to his sister on the phone, even when, as she knew now, she had probably been trying to manipulate him into giving her money or whatever it was that she needed. There was his sense of adventure. His wry and often well-concealed sense of humor. His brainy, economist's way of analyzing the world, so different from hers. The way he left himself totally and completely open in his message, which she read over and over, obsessively.

But even so, she knew she hadn't been wrong to turn him down. She couldn't give up her true self to be what he wanted and needed, especially when in the end she felt like she didn't really know him, and he didn't really know her. Some things he said in the letter made her think that maybe he really did get her, after all. On the other hand, that didn't make them right for each other. Even if he did understand how she felt about her work, that didn't mean he didn't need a wife to do wifely things for him. Hell, _she _needed a wife to do wifely things for _her_. And he was unapologetic about WPD and its activities. So maybe it was better this way. Maybe, if they had both been different, more flexible, asked for different things, it could have been great. But in that case they wouldn't have been true to themselves, either of them. Yes, it was definitely better this way.

* * *

The next Sunday, Lizzy met Charlotte for brunch at the bagel place. They hadn't seen each other very often while Lizzy and Will had been together, because Sunday mornings had been occupied by couple time. They had kept in touch by phone, though, so Charlotte knew the basic details of Lizzy and Will's relationship up until the breakup. Lizzy was glad to meet up with Charlotte again just as they had in their old routine. Today it wasn't too cold for mid-November, so they went to the park as usual and sat on a bench in the weak sunshine.

Lizzy asked, "So, Charlotte, what's this I hear about Safe & Lock?"

Charlotte grinned excitedly at her. "Yeah, isn't that awesome? My parents are so psyched! I'm sorry I couldn't tell you about it before-confidentiality and all that."

Lizzy was shocked. "So...your dad wasn't forced into the sale? It's a good thing?"

"Oh, yeah. I told you before, things were not looking good there with the company for a long time. My folks were worried about whether they'd be able to retire in any kind of style, travel, and all that. Now they know they'll be very comfortable."

"But what about the company? Aren't they sad to see it go?" Lizzy could understand this from the bottom-line perspective, but the business had been in the family for generations. Didn't that mean anything to them?

"Lizzy, the world is changing. Globalizing. A little operation like that just can't make it anymore in this environment."

"But it isn't little! _Hundreds _of people are going to be out of work! What are they going to do?"

"I know, Lizzy, and I feel terrible about that. Really, I do. Like, half our classmates' parents are going to be out of work. It's going to be a fucking disaster for Artemis."

Charlotte looked down at her hands, and then up at Lizzy, pleading with her to understand. "But, Lizzy, the fact is that my dad would have had to close down the factory, anyway. It just wasn't competitive, and it was close to bankruptcy. At least this way the specialized safe workshop will stay open, so some jobs will stay. And, my folks get something out of it, instead of losing everything."

"Oh, my God..." Lizzy put her face in her hands. She had completely reamed Will out about this, and now it looked like she had been wrong about a lot of it. WPD hadn't made things worse; they might even have prevented the worst possible outcome from happening. It was Charlotte's parents who were the bad guys. Shit. What a mess.

"What's going on, Lizzy? I'm really upset about what this is going to do to the town, too, but it seems like something else is bothering you here."

So Lizzy told her all about the end of her relationship with Will, while the cool autumn breeze pushed around dead leaves and candy wrappers on the ground.

"You turned down Will Darcy?" Charlotte gaped incredulously. "You gave up a chance at all that money, and that life, and the opportunity never to have to work again in your life?"

"Of course I did! I just don't understand it, Charlotte. Why would he even suggest this stuff to me? It's not like I ever gave him any sign that I wanted to get serious, or that I'd be interested in quitting my job. It's not like I hide the fact that it's important to me."

"Did you complain about your job and all the hours you work?" Charlotte asked.

With a bitter laugh, Lizzy said, "Of course! I hate working at DeWitt."

"Maybe he thought you were hinting that you wanted to quit working," Charlotte reasoned.

"What?" Lizzy was outraged that Charlotte would side with Will.

"I can imagine someone getting that message." Charlotte was always so goddamn reasonable.

"But that would be so...I don't know, passive aggressive or something. I'm not like that."

"I know that. But does he?"

"I told him I wasn't interested in anything serious! And he said he wasn't, either!" cried Lizzy, exasperated.

"Isn't that usually code for 'I want to get serious, but I'm afraid it will scare you away if I say so'?"

"Maybe for some people! But I said exactly what I meant, and I meant what I said."

"I think the guy has it bad for you, Lizzy."

"Oh, please, why would he be seriously interested in me, anyway? One, I work too much. Two, I am hardly the model of Delicate Fucking Femininity that he seems to want in a wife. Three, what the fuck?"

"Do you have a better, what did your dad like to call it, more _parsimonious _explanation? The simplest explanation is the most likely, right? Either he's crazy, or he is, or was, just super into you."

"Oh, God."

They chewed on their bagels for a while and watched the pigeons squabbling over a McDonald's bag on the sidewalk.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't want what he wants. I don't even know how much I like him. I hate what he does for a living. Never mind. It's over anyway."

Charlotte shrugged. "If you say so. I still can't believe you turned him down. Christ."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Lizzy said, "Anyway, enough about me and my soap opera. What else is new with you? What's going on with Liam?"

Things were going very well with Liam, as it turned out. He was about their age, 30, and he was a manager at a Gap at a mall in Brooklyn. But that was just how he earned his living. Really, he was an artist. Charlotte said she really liked him. She liked that he was thinking realistically about money issues, but still trying to find time for his sculpture. They were talking about getting a place together. Liam sounded like he had the edge Charlotte found attractive, but also the practicality and reliability that she wanted in a partner. Lizzy was glad to hear it, because Charlotte had been looking for someone to settle down with for a while now.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Lizzy started to feel worse and worse about how things had ended with Will. She had really slammed him in just about every conceivable way, and after he'd handed her his heart on a platter. She felt terrible that she hadn't known about his sister and all the things he was going through related to her addictions. She wished she'd had the facts about the Safe & Lock situation before she had accused him of ill intentions. She wished she had known before how much he had struggled establishing himself at WPD. Even though she hadn't been wrong to turn him down, she wished she had been kinder. She should have said, "You're a nice man, but we're not a good match. We just don't want the same things." She wished she hadn't yelled. He didn't deserve to be treated the awful, awful way she'd treated him. But she also thought it likely that he wouldn't want to hear from her after the things she'd said. That seemed pretty clear from his message to her.

So, nearly two weeks after Will had sent her his long missive, she wrote him a short one back. She felt like she couldn't _not _write one, even if he didn't want to hear it. She wrote,

_Will,_

_Thank you for your message. I'm really sorry to hear about your sister. I can't imagine the pain this must have caused you. My youngest sister is always in one kind of trouble or another, and we all have nightmares that she is headed down the same path that your sister is on._

_But please don't take this all on yourself. Since law school, I have worked on cases in the law clinic and also worked on some pro bono cases at DeWitt, many of them focusing on juveniles struggling with drugs, sexual abuse, and worse. And I saw first-hand that addiction is about a lot of things, not just bad parenting. People, kids, make bad choices sometimes. Heredity figures into it, too. You are such a good person, and you have tried to do right by your sister. It is not your fault. I know your counselors and lawyers will have told you this, but please believe that it is true._

_Finally, I wanted to apologize for what I said and how I said it that night at your place. I didn't understand the complexities of the Safe & Lock deal, and I'm really sorry that I implied you were up to no good there. I also wish that I had expressed myself much more temperately on a number of other topics. I am very, very sorry that I spoke to you in such a hurtful way, and I do hope you'll accept my deepest apologies for that. I wish things hadn't ended as they did, and I'll always look back fondly on our time together._

_Please take good care of yourself._

_Elizabeth_

She sent it off into the ether, and that was that.

She threw herself into her work, but it didn't give her the sense of accomplishment and progress that it once had. As the days went by and her billable hours piled up, she started to feel more and more dissatisfied with her work situation. It was intolerable, really. How much money did she really need to save up before she quit, anyway? Maybe it was time to make the move. She talked a big game about hating Corporate America, but here she was, still slaving away for The Man. She also realized that she had gotten really good at using work to avoid thinking about anything she didn't want to think about, to avoid talking with anyone she didn't want to talk to, to avoid seeing anyone she didn't want to see. Like her mother, for instance. It was cowardly, really. She decided to take a trip to Artemis to see her parents. It was about time. She called her mom and told her she was planning to come home for Thanksgiving.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Thanks so very much to Jan and Barbara for their wonderful beta work on this chapter!_

**Chapter 9**

November 2006

It was a four-hour drive from New York City to Artemis, or at least it would have been without the day-before-Thanksgiving traffic. It took closer to six hours today. After it got dark, Lizzy took it fairly slow in her rented sedan as she headed off the main highway and out into the country roads of the Finger Lakes region. As she got closer to home, she could feel her world getting smaller, until it was almost like she had never left. She drove up the winding, unlit and unpaved road and parked behind her parents' ancient Volvo station wagon. As usual, it was sitting outside the garage because her mom couldn't back it out of the garage without hitting the doorway.

The house was a 1970s monstrosity with an open floor plan, odd balconies and loft spaces scattered here and there, and lots of rough, unfinished wood everyplace. It was about a 10-minute drive outside the town of Artemis proper, in the woods, and situated next to an abandoned stone quarry that was now a lovely little pond. The pond had provided year-round entertainment for Lizzy and her sisters while they were growing up. Now it seemed to Lizzy more like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

As Lizzy cut the engine, her mother, Lillian, came out of the house, linen tunic flapping and big earrings and bracelets clanking.

"Lizzy! Lovey. We're so glad you're here. What a treat!" Lillian gave Lizzy a big hug and a kiss as she stepped a little unsteadily out of the car.

Lillian was the artistic type. Over the years, she had had interests in painting, weaving, dyeing, spinning, and sculpture. She had an art shed in the yard behind the house, just at the edge of the woods. She clearly enjoyed her art a lot, and Lizzy always liked to go out to the shed to see what she'd been up to.

She was also a culinary enthusiast who enjoyed above all throwing elaborate dinner parties for her husband's colleagues and their wives. She had the complete run of all of Julia Child's various cooking shows on video and also owned all of her books. She was a great cook, and she was even better after a few glasses of red wine. Then she would begin gesticulating and providing a running commentary on her cooking with lots of faux French and inadvertent Italian thrown in. "Oh, Mon Dyoo! Let's splash a little vino onto these pearl won-yons here and see if we can't get them caramelized toot sweet!" and so on.

Lizzy, who actually spoke better-than-average French thanks to her French boyfriend from long ago, was naturally appalled. But she had to admit that the food was delicious, the presentation was beautiful, and everyone had a fantastic time. And thus she expected that Thanksgiving dinner would be quite the fabulous affair, as usual.

"Sweetie, there's been a change of plans. As you know, Janey is having Thanksgiving with Charlie's family. So it'll just be you and me and Daddy and Lydia."

"What about Mary?"

"Oh, yes, that's what I meant to say. Mary drove down from Syracuse earlier today, but she had a fight with your father about...I don't know, I think politics, maybe?...and so she headed back to Syracuse an hour or two ago."

This was not too surprising. Mary had been leaving family events before they began with some regularity since she was in college. Usually it was because Tom said something nasty about Ayn Rand to provoke her.

"Oh, and I forgot! Ed and Maddie and the kids will be joining us! They're driving in from Boston later tonight. But they said they'd be arriving late because there's a huge traffic jam on the Mass Pike."(1)

"Great! I haven't seen them in a million years." Lizzy had always had a special relationship with her mother's younger brother, Ed, and his wife, Maddie.

By this time, Lillian and Lizzy had brought her bag into the house, and Lizzy headed upstairs to her old room. At first, when Lizzy had gone off to college, her mother had tried to hide the fact that she had started using Lizzy's room for her art projects. It used to be that Lizzy would find bits of thread or fabric in the corners of the room, but it still looked like her room. By now, though, Lillian had given up the charade. Lizzy lifted a tower of fabric from the floor to the bed to make room for her bag, and then made for her father's study down on the first floor.

"Daddy?" she said, peeking around the doorway.

He was parked behind his computer, and when he looked up and saw her he quickly clicked closed a window he'd been working on, stood up, and came over to give her a hug and a kiss on the top of her head. He hadn't closed fast enough, though. She had seen he was playing spider solitaire rather than writing his book.

"How was the drive, sweetheart?"

"Not too bad. How are you doing, Daddy?"

"Same old same old, enjoying the break with all the students gone. Working on my book. But more importantly, what's going on with you and your career?" He'd been "working" on the book manuscript for about 15 years.

Lizzy's dad had always been her biggest supporter when it came to academics, and, now, her career. Like her, he wasn't too thrilled by the fact that she was working for The Man, but he understood why she had to do it and always urged her to keep her eye on the prize, the Really Important Job where she could make a big difference. After a half an hour of catching up about her work, she told him she needed to get something to eat, and wandered off to the kitchen.

Lillian said, "Where have you been, sweetie? Mon Dyoo, you must be starving. Want me to whip something up for you?"

Lizzy knew that if she did, it would be delicious but it would also take about three hours, so instead, she smiled and said, "No thanks, Mom. I'll just make myself a sandwich or something. Save your energy for tomorrow."

Lillian said, "All right. Oh! I want to show you something. My latest project!"

When she came back into the room, she was holding a small video camera, which Lizzy could see was recording, because the red light was on. Lillian was narrating.

"And this is Lizzy, our second daughter, a lawyer in New York City. We're so glad she could make it home for Thanksgiving this year."

"Mom, what are you doing?" Lizzy frowned as she grabbed some cold cuts and other fixings out of the big stainless steel fridge and tossed them on the granite counter.

"I'm making a documentary about our family." She was still filming.

"What about our family?"

"I don't know. I'm still looking for the...uh...what did she call it? Narrative thread." Lillian got closer so she could zoom in on Lizzy spreading mustard on her bread.

"Mom, please don't." Lizzy blocked her face with her shoulder.

Fortunately, just then Uncle Ed, Aunt Maddie, and their two daughters, aged 8 and 10, arrived. Lillian and Lizzy went outside to say hello as they all piled out of their VW station wagon. The girls both looked a little green around the gills. Without a word, the younger one, Sadie, ran straight into the house.

Uncle Ed said, "Sorry, they both got a little carsick on the winding roads. Could you please bring some wet paper towels?"

Lizzy did, and after they'd finished cleaning out the back seats, with only middling success, and carried all the bags into the house and washed their hands and wiped Sadie's mouth, they finally got a chance to hug and kiss and say hello. Naturally Lillian kept the camera rolling.

"Mom, put down the camera and say hi properly."

Reluctantly, she did, and they all sat down in the living room to catch up. Lizzy ate her sandwich perched on a dining room chair in the doorway, since Lillian forbade food in the living room.

"Where's Lydia tonight?" asked Aunt Maddie. "And Tom?"

"Oh, he's in his study. Stick your head in and say hi. Lydia is out this evening. I'm sure she'll be back for dinner tomorrow."

Lizzy didn't like the sound of this, and apparently Aunt Maddie, who was a family therapist, didn't either.

Lillian said, "Oh, don't worry about it. She's a teenager. Teenagers just have to work things out for themselves."

But Lizzy and Maddie talked about it after Lillian went to bed, and they agreed that this was not good, and that they would try to find out what was going on with Lydia.

The next morning, Lydia still hadn't shown up. Lillian said Lydia was probably at her friend Abigail Forster's house. Lizzy and Maddie drove over to Abigail's house, but Lydia wasn't there. Abigail suggested she might be down on the Common, the old Main Street area of town that was now a pedestrian mall. There were lots of shops there, and also one corner, called The Pit, where a lot of Goth kids and skateboard punks hung out. Lizzy and Maddie drove down out of the hills into the center of Artemis, heading for the Common.

On the way there, on one of the bluffs overlooking the center of town down by the lake, Lizzy saw the big sign that said "Lucas Safe & Lock." There was no escape from her fuck-ups, it seemed. She felt a little sick.

Sure enough, Lydia was there at The Pit, sitting with her friends on the cold cement blocks of the fountain closed for the winter and looking pretty stoned. She seemed to have a lot more piercings and tattoos than the last time Lizzy had seen her, although it was hard to tell under all the black clothes and pancake makeup.

"Hey, Lydia," said Lizzy. Lydia looked at her bleary-eyed. "Hey, sweetie, let's go home. Uncle Ed and Aunt Maddie are here for Thanksgiving."

"Fuck off," said Lydia, and things went downhill from there.

Eventually Lizzy and Maddie got Lydia into the car, but they didn't take her straight home. Instead, they found a hippie coffeehouse, got some caffeine into her, and warmed her up after her night spent on the Common. Then Maddie worked her family therapy magic. She asked a lot of questions: Had something traumatic happened? What was going on at school? Had she been sexually assaulted, either setting off the anti-social behavior, or while sleeping out on the Common? Was she suicidal? The answer to all these questions seemed to be no. Eventually Lydia agreed to go back to the house, although she said she wouldn't help cook or talk with her mother. So she stayed in her room and did something or other until it was time to come out for dinner.

Lillian was cooking up a storm, drinking red wine, trilling like Julia Child, and speaking more and more faux French the more wine she downed.

"Sadie, sweetie, peel these _pommes_ for me!" she directed, pointing at some potatoes. "Hannah, lovey, please hand me some _du beurre_. It's next to the big pot."(2) She was really in her element. She had a system. Most of the system involved butter.

By 4 o'clock, the food was all ready, and Lizzy and the girls had, as instructed by Lillian, set the table for eight with the good silver and the right placemats and candles and all the Thanksgiving decorations. Then the doorbell rang, and a couple of Tom's students who didn't have family nearby and couldn't go home for Thanksgiving came in.

"Oh, right," said Lillian, "Come on in, my _chers_! Have some munchies. Set up another table, please, Lizzy? _Un autre table_, seal-voo-play!" So Lizzy and the girls did. And the doorbell kept on ringing as various other strays and neighbors that Lillian had forgotten she'd invited showed up right before dinner was served. In the end, there were close to twenty people seated at tables spilling out of the dining room and into the living room.

Lizzy got Lydia from her room and Tom from his, and they all sat down. It was a fantastic meal, an amazing Thanksgiving bounty that just went on and on, followed up by four kinds of pie, including Lillian's famous pumpkin pie that she made from fresh pumpkins. The guests ate and laughed raucously and consumed bottle after bottle of wine.

After they had all stuffed themselves and carried the dishes to the kitchen for a later cleanup, everyone retired to the living room, where they all sat slumped on various pieces of furniture and on the floor, trying to catch their respective breaths. Lillian got out her video camera and started filming their states of repose. When Lillian got to her, Lizzy put out her hand and turned her face away. Tom looked up at the camera with a blank expression, and said nothing. Sadie and Hannah hid behind their mother, and Uncle Ed said, "Lillian, let's not do that right now." Then she moved on to Lydia, who was sitting next to Ed.

"MOM! Get that camera the FUCK out of my FACE!" Lydia screamed as she shoved it away and stormed off to her room.

"Well, I think you just found your narrative thread, Mom," Lizzy commented.

Lizzy stayed all day Friday, foraging from the huge mounds of leftovers with the rest of the family, and spending hours in the living room talking with Maddie and Ed while Lillian popped in and out of the room. Tom stayed in his study, and Sadie and Hannah played outside in the yard and at the edge of the woods. Lydia had disappeared again on her Vespa.

Ed and Maddie expressed their concern about Lydia.

"What can we do? I just feel so helpless," Lizzy said.

"I know, sweetheart. We've decided to stay through the weekend, to talk about this with your mom and dad." Maddie replied gently.

"I just don't understand what's going on here. When Jane and Mary and I were Lydia's age, mom and dad would never have let us get away with this kind of thing."

Ed said, "She's what, ten years younger than you? I think that it's fairly typical for parents to be less strict with younger children, after the older ones have worn them down, isn't that right, Maddie?"

"Yes, that's true, and it does seem to me that they've completely failed to set any boundaries for Lydia. But I also think there may be some other things going on here, things that are leading Lydia to make some bad choices on her own. So I'll see if I can get her to talk to me this weekend, and I'll also talk to Tom and Lill about family counseling," Maddie said. "I'll get Jane involved, as well."

"But is there anything _I _can do?"

"I don't think so, aside from being as supportive as you can."

The good news was that Lydia had managed to put together an art portfolio earlier in the fall, and had applied to a number of different art colleges. If she could just make it till graduation, they agreed, then things might get better for her.

Then the conversation turned to Sadie and Hannah and their various activities, their successes at school, Maddie and Ed's respective jobs-in short, their very, very busy family life.

Later, Lizzy asked for Ed and Maddie's advice about her job, and whether it would be foolish for her to walk away from it right now. Ed ran the numbers for her on his laptop, looking at a series of different assumptions about her future life and finances. He was really good at that stuff. If the kind of public interest law job she wanted earned about $70,000 year, and if she stayed single, and if she wanted to live by herself in Manhattan, and if she wanted to buy a place instead of renting for the rest of her life, and if she wanted to be able to retire at age 65, and if she wanted to have savings in case she lost her job and had nobody else to rely on financially...Together they came to the conclusion that the only way for her to get the life she wanted, in all its different parts, was for her to stay at DeWitt through the end of 2007. There they were, the cold, hard facts. She was stuck. She'd just have to gut it out.

Lizzy left Artemis early the next morning with a lot to think about on the long drive back to the city. She'd always known she could never go back home, but this visit had made it clearer than ever. Her parents were doing fine without her, her father with his books and computer, and her mother with her art, cooking, and garden. Lydia was hurting, but there wasn't much Lizzy could do about it. Aunt Maddie and Jane were on the case and would make sure Lydia got all the help available for her in this podunk town.

Ed and Maddie, on the other hand, were obviously thriving, and so were Sadie and Hannah. She had always enjoyed spending time with them because they were a great team, as a couple and as a family. She knew the two of them had worked very hard to overcome some early problems in their relationship, especially around communication. That's what Maddie had told her, communication. She didn't know exactly what that meant, but whatever it was, they seemed to have worked it out.

Maddie had a very busy practice, and Ed put in long hours at an IT firm on Route 128 (3). But somehow they made it all work with all that _and _two kids. How did they do that? Was it as effortless as it seemed? Did she want that?

Was she going to be happy if all she had was work? Especially _this _work.

She thought about this for some time as she drove along, and the more she thought about it, the lower her heart sank. She thought about all the couples she knew-Jane and Charlie, Charlotte and Liam, Maddie and Ed, her parents...OK, maybe not so much her parents. She wasn't really sure if they were currently speaking to one another. But the others all had something important, it seemed to her. Jobs they enjoyed, love and support, joy and satisfaction just in being together a lot of the time. And she realized that she had had at least some of that with Will. Or, maybe, she could have had that with Will, if things had gone differently. If only he could have accepted her the way she was, obsessed with work, or if only she could have made more time for him...Wait, who was she kidding? It wasn't a question of time, or compromise. It was that he didn't want someone like her.

Shit. She had to admit, she really missed him, and, OK, maybe she could admit that she might even have loved him. But, that didn't solve the basic problem that he was gone because _he didn't want someone like her_. So what was she going to do about it? She knew she could never, and didn't want to, change herself to be the kind of woman he wanted. That was that, then, as far as he was concerned. It was time to move on.

Because, she realized, she really did want someone to care about, and to care about her. There just wasn't anyone right now. Jane and Charlie, Charlotte and Liam, Maddie and Ed, they all had each other. And all she had was work, where she was just another face, another means for the company to make money. Even when she moved on to another, better job where she might also do some good, she knew it wouldn't be enough. She wanted to matter to somebody, and to have someone who mattered to her, to be the center of someone's universe and to know that he was the center of hers.

Oh, shit. She was going to have to start dating.

* * *

And so she did start dating, just a little bit. She wouldn't, on principle, date any guys from work, not that she liked any of them anyway. But she never went anywhere else where she might meet men. So, she decided to sign up for Dating .com. She gave it two hours a week, maximum, including time spent messaging and used for face-to-face coffee dates.

It was awful. After she'd established her very narrow search parameters, she still had to weed out the unemployed ones, and the ones who lived with their mothers, and the ones who wanted a stay-at-home wife. That was almost the most important question, she thought. Unfortunately, there was a high degree of overlap between the unemployed ones and the ones who wanted their wives to work. Oh, well.

There were some good-looking ones, and some smart ones, some sweet ones, some funny ones, and some hard-working ones. But none of them were all of this wrapped up into one, like Will. Shit. Shit.

After a couple of months of this, and after surviving the whirl of year-end holiday parties on her own, she despaired. That was it, she just despaired. And she didn't know where to go from here.

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) The Mass Pike is the Massachusetts Turnpike, otherwise known as I-90, the main East-West highway out of Boston. It's not uncommon for the Mass Pike to have hours-long delays the day before Thanksgiving, which is the heaviest travel day of the year in the US as everyone rushes home for the Thursday holiday.

(2) Lillian's French is terrible. She says _pommes _(apples) instead of _pommes de terre_ (potatoes). She calls butter _du beurre_ (some butter) instead of just _beurre_. There are other mistakes later on, too. You get the picture.

(3) Route 128 in the Boston area is the East Coast equivalent of Silicon Valley in California, the center of the high-tech industry.


	10. Chapter 10

_A/N: As always, my warmest thanks to Jan and Barbara for straightening out my many mistakes and screw-ups in this chapter._ _Any screw-ups that remain are the result of my resisting their good advice._

**Chapter 10**

January 2007

In late January, Jane called Lizzy to give her some great news. She and Charlie were engaged! He had asked her to marry him while they had been at the top of the Empire State Building! It had been just like "An Affair to Remember," except that nobody had gotten hit by a car! He was so romantic! She was ecstatic! They were going to have an engagement party. Will was going to throw the party for them at his place, because it would be tacky for them to host their own engagement party, even though they wanted to share their joy with THE WHOLE WORLD! Lizzy had never heard Jane sound so happy. Hearing this, and hearing Will's name, and thinking about going back to his apartment for the first time since the breakup, just made her feel even more morose. But she knew that was selfish, and also unkind to Jane.

So instead of whining or crying, she bucked up and said, truthfully, "Oh, Janey. I am _so _happy for you and Charlie. What can I do to help?"

"Not much, I think. Will is having his social coordinator take care of most of it."

"Right...So, Will. I haven't seen him in a long time. How has he been?" Lizzy asked. She had never told Jane about her involvement with him, and she didn't think this was the right time to bring it up. But she really wanted to know.

"Oh...He seems to have been having a really hard time of it, I think. Maybe a woman? You know, he plays his cards really close to the vest. Charlie and I have barely been able to get him to go out at all since...hmmm...Thanksgiving, maybe? Maybe even longer ago than that."

"Oh, that's too bad."

"Well, that's why it's so great that he's hosting the party for us. Hopefully it will do him some good, get him circulating again," said Jane sweetly.

Lizzy knew that was probably true, but boy did she wish she didn't have to see it.

* * *

A month later, on a Friday night, there she was at the party. Jane had found her a beautiful dress and dolled her up, so she knew she probably looked great. But she didn't feel great, not walking back into Will's building again. She said hello to the doorman, an elderly Dominican named David, and he said, "Nice to see you again, Lizzy," as she and Jane headed toward the ornate brass elevator doors. Jane gave her a funny look, but was apparently too excited and preoccupied to ask what that was all about.

The higher they rose, the sicker she felt. By the time they got to the eleventh floor, she was ready to throw up into her little clutch. Will met her and Jane at the door, taking their coats and looking so handsome in that way that tall, rangy guys in designer suits do. He gave Jane a kiss on the cheek, and told her how beautiful she looked, and she tripped off to go find Charlie, while Lizzy looked on, now feeling as if she might burst into tears.

Will turned to her, and not really knowing what else to do, she took a big breath, smiled a big fake, bright smile, and stepped forward to do the European kiss-kiss-kiss routine.

"Hi Will. How have you been?"

She thought maybe he looked a bit tired around the eyes, but he said, "Oh, pretty well. How about you? It's been a long time."

Really, she couldn't stand it. She wanted to grab him and shake him and yell at him for not wanting her, but also to tell him how much she missed him, and to beg him to give her another chance, even though quite honestly she couldn't imagine how they could possibly work things out between them.

So instead, she gave him a more genuine smile, and said, "I'm doing all right, just working all the time as usual. Anyway, thanks for hosting the party. It really means a lot to Jane and Charlie that you wanted to do it."

"Well, it's the least I could do. I've got the space, anyway," he said, leading the way into the living room before heading off to put the coats away. Lizzy was shocked to see that some double doors she'd never paid any attention to before led into a second, very large, and even more formal space with gilt mirrors and all sorts of art nouveau decorations, now set up specially for the party and full of bustling catering staff. How could she have missed this? Apparently the apartment was a lot bigger than she'd realized, in spite of all the time she'd spent there. She wondered what else about him she had simply failed to notice back then.

Before long, Lillian, Tom, and Lydia arrived, along with Maddie and Ed, Sadie and Hannah. They were all staying at a hotel not far away. Ed and Maddie were every inch the stylish urban couple, and Sadie and Hannah looked adorable. Lydia was, naturally, dressed in black and was sulking. Tom, on the other hand, seemed hardly to have dressed up at all, except that he was wearing a tie along with his usual tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. And Lillian was a big shiny column, her stocky body sheathed in champagne silk shantung and various dangly, glittery baubles clanking around on her arms and neck. One of them was her little video camera.

Mary had canceled at the last minute because she'd had another fight with Tom while they were discussing travel arrangements. He had said something snide about how ironic it was that Mary was going to take Amtrak from Rochester, when one of the main plot points in _Atlas Shrugged_was that the U.S. railroad system would grind to a halt due to socialism, mediocrity, and incompetence. Mary had hung up on him and emailed her insincere apologies to Jane. Jane hadn't taken it personally. Mary and Tom had been doing this particular dance for years.

After the family had all been introduced to Will, and met or said hello to Charlie, whom Lillian and Tom had met at Jane's graduation, Lillian wandered away a little and started exclaiming about the apartment and how _magnifique _it was. Grabbing a glass of red wine, she flipped up her camera and started filming.

As soon as Lizzy saw it, she walked straight over to her and put her hand over the lens. In a low, furious voice, she said, "Mom, no. You will put that goddamn thing away, and you will not take it out again all night. You will not make Janey's engagement party part of your circus."

Ed agreed and hustled Lillian off to the coatroom so she could put the camera away.

Tom said in an ironic tone, "She's having just a little trouble putting that project of hers down at the socially appropriate moment." He didn't look too bothered about it, though.

Lydia turned to Lizzy and seethed, "It's really fucking annoying. I told her if she didn't get that fucking camera out of my face I'd fucking break it." She crossed her arms and turned away from the rest of the group. Jane made soothing noises, and Maddie tried to smooth things over by asking Will about the history of his building.

Throughout this display, Will had stood stock still and silent, observing, looking increasingly like a cat freaked out by a vacuum cleaner: eyes wide, whiskers at attention, ears back. At least he didn't arch his back and hiss, or run and hide under the table, thought Lizzy. Really, it was too much. She knew that now he could see extra-clearly why she could never be the kind of wife he needed, coming from a family like that. Hopeless.

However, much to Lizzy's surprise, Will quickly pulled himself out of freaked-out mode and answered Maddie's questions with great cordiality.

"It was built in 1916. It was one of the first apartment buildings in the area, stuck in here among all the mansions along Fifth Avenue."

"If you don't mind my asking, has the apartment been in your family for a long time?"

"Not at all. Not too long-my grandmother bought it in the 1960s after she was widowed." Lizzy hadn't known any of this. Why hadn't she asked? Will continued talking about the apartment for a little while, and then he asked Maddie about the girls and about her work. He seemed genuinely interested in her family counseling practice and asked smart, informed questions- probably, she realized, because of the time he'd spent trying to work things out with Georgie.

Eventually Lillian, looking chastened, came back in with Ed and they all made polite conversation until the rest of the guests arrived. Maddie and Ed took on the job of keeping Lillian somewhat contained. Before too long, Tom and Lydia wandered off to look for a room with a TV, where he watched old movies and she texted her friends. Shortly afterward, the guests began to trickle in, an interesting mixture made up on the one hand of Jane's counter-cultural grad school and college friends, and on the other of Charlie's straight-arrow business school classmates and advertising co-workers

Nearly an hour late, Caroline, Louisa and Gil finally came blowing in. Caroline was complaining loudly about taxi drivers and immigrants and movie crews and various other things. After the newcomers had been introduced to the members of the Bennet family who hadn't gone into hiding, Lizzy noticed Charlie, who was standing on Jane's other side, giving Louisa a Very Significant Look.

When Caroline turned to Will and opened her mouth to say something, Louisa took her by the arm and said, "Look, Caroline, I see Mitzy Goodbody over there! Let's go say hi," and dragged her off. Gil followed behind, nipping at Caroline's heels and herding her back in the right direction when she seemed about to escape. This was interesting.

"Charlie?" she asked, peering around Jane to look at him questioningly.

He glanced at Will and said, "Um, I promised Will I'd do what I could."

And indeed for the rest of the evening, Louisa and Gil kept Caroline penned in the corner. Lizzy hoped they would at least let her go to the bathroom if the need arose.

Lizzy watched Will move around the party, sometimes standing near Charlie and Jane, and other times off acting as host and checking in with his guests as they came in. He talked more with Maddie and Ed and the girls, although she noticed not so much with Lillian. He also seemed reluctant to talk to _her_. And no wonder, she thought, after the things she'd said to him.

Women came up to him alone, making eyes at him and looking for excuses to touch his arm or shoulder. Every single one of them. And every single one of them got the same treatment: he slowly and unobtrusively guided them over to someone else, usually a single man. He stood there for a brief moment, and then walked away. Once she even got close enough to hear him say, "Marie, have you met my friend Sean? He's a co-worker of Charlie's at ABG." And then he casually wandered off toward the bar, again, although she noticed he was drinking ginger ale. She could see he was an expert at this, and she realized that this was a big part of his life, both at work and probably with his family. Much more significant, probably, than the other little bits of his life that he'd shared with her.

Once, he finally did come stand next to her, and they stood silently together for a moment before he said, "So, Lizzy, how are you? Are you doing well?" Of course they'd already covered this territory, but she didn't know what else to say, either.

"Yeah, I'm doing well. Of course work has been really busy. Major trainwreck of a case around Christmas, a bunch of unexpected motions as usual-the Iron Law of Litigation. How about you?"

"Yeah, me, too. It's been really busy."

They stood in silence for a while longer. This is what we've become, she thought. At one time we could have talked for hours, but look at us now. What is there to say? She thought her heart would break.

Finally, she couldn't stand it anymore. After first checking to be sure that there was nobody nearby to overhear, she quietly inquired, "How's your sister?" She wasn't sure if it was the right thing to say, but she wanted very much to know.

"Not too well, I'm afraid. She called me again last week, same old story."

"Oh, Will. I'm so sorry," she said, putting her hand on his sleeve.

He smiled a little sadly. "Yeah, it's tough. How's your sister? Is this the one you mentioned, the one who was having a hard time?"

"Yeah, she's the one. Not doing great. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised she agreed to come at all, considering how much she's been acting out lately." She shifted from side to side, a little uncomfortable at talking with him about this kind of personal stuff, even though she'd brought it up.

"Teenagers are difficult," he said, knowingly. "Hang in there."

"I'll be OK. It's my parents I worry about. Something's got to give in that house, and unfortunately I don't see them changing _their _ways any time soon. Hopefully they can keep it together until she graduates this spring..."

"Yeah. I hope so, too, for all your sakes."

Some more guests came in. "Sorry, I have to go say hello," he said regretfully, although she couldn't really imagine why after their maudlin, awkward conversation.

After a few minutes, she pulled herself together enough to talk to some of the other guests. At one point she drifted into a group of women her age and a little older. They were professional women, talking about their jobs, and in particular how things were for women at their firms, which all seemed to be in business of one kind or another.

"There's just this locker-room atmosphere that drives me crazy. All these different ways of letting you know that you don't belong." So said a round, matronly white woman in her 40s.

"Right, it's not like there are posters of naked women up in the break room or anything. More like little comments about how women aren't serious about their careers, especially if they have children. That spells the end of your career at my firm. No woman with children has ever made partner." A small African-American woman with fabulous, spiky, natural hair, shook her head as she said this.

A tall Hispanic woman said, "The sad thing is that it doesn't have to be like that. You know, I'm working at WPD, and Will has really led from the top that way. Zero tolerance for sexist crap."

Naturally this got Lizzy's attention. "Really? What kind of stuff is going on there?"

"Forty percent of the associates are women, which is unusual in our sector. And over a third of upper management is women, too, if you can believe it. Less emphasis on hours put in and more on actually accomplishing things and delivering the goods. A real maternity leave policy, not the kind where you phone into work from your hospital bed. There's a short-term part-time track where you can cut down on your hours while your kids are young and then ramp back up without losing seniority."

The women all oohed and aahed.

"How long has all of this been going on?" asked Lizzy.

The tall woman said, "Some of it for a long time, but they're also starting some kind of new initiative this year, connected to WPD's restructuring." What was that? Lizzy wondered, but before she could ask, one of the other women, a pale redhead with long curls down her back, jumped in.

"That's really interesting, especially in a firm like WPD. Do you know how it all got started?"

"Well, I wasn't there myself, but I heard that right after Will took over the firm, there were a whole bunch of women associates who decided to quit, including one of the top performers in the firm. He knew the firm couldn't afford to lose them, so he took aside that one woman and asked her what he needed to do to keep her. She really had guts. She read him the riot act, and told him that it wasn't only more money, or more perks, that would make the difference for her or any of the other women, but better work policies and other things that would let them lead the same kind of full lives as the men. So he hired a great new head of HR-"

The other women murmured in disbelief at the idea that there could such a thing as a great head of Human Resources.

"I know, I know, but he did, and they did this whole 'Great Place for Women to Work' initiative. It's amazing, and it's made a huge difference for the women in the firm."

Then conversation turned to how poorly everyone else's companies were supporting them as they'd begun to have children, and Lizzy drifted away.

How could this be? Could she have so thoroughly misunderstood him? Although it was clear his motive in making these policies was primarily about keeping his most talented employees, he'd never said he objected to women working, in general. He'd only said he objected to his _own _wife working. Hopeless, really.

But what was this about WPD's restructuring? What did that mean? She needed to find out. She knew she shouldn't do it, but for just a minute she sneaked out of the party and into the spare room where the coats were being kept on several big racks. She grabbed her BlackBerry out of her coat pocket. She slipped into the room next door, Will's office, to Google it.

And right there in _The Wall Street Journal_-how had she missed it?-she saw the article:

_January 20, 2007_

_WPD Capital to Change Directions, Fund Green Startups_

_New York-WPD Capital CEO William Darcy announced today that WPD would be changing the focus of its activities beginning this quarter. Abandoning the firm's longstanding position as a private equity firm acquiring and restructuring struggling businesses, the firm will transition over the next six months into venture capital, funding high-tech startups with a focus on innovative green technologies. Mr. Darcy said that this change might lead to the loss of a small number of jobs at the firm, but that most associates would remain on staff. When asked what motivated the firm's change in direction, since it reported over $300 million in profits in 2005, Mr. Darcy said simply, "I'm tired of being one of the bad guys."_

_Industry analysts say that this is a game-changer in the VC sector, and that the amount of capital likely to be infused into the renewable energy sector as a result would help reduce U.S. dependence on carbon-based energy sources. _

_The restructured WPD Capital has already announced that the first project it will fund is the commercialization of an innovative solar cell technology developed by scientists at Artemis College in Artemis, New York._

Oh, God. He had actually taken the step they'd talked about all those months ago, and totally changed what WPD did. What could it mean, _tired of being one of the bad guys_? Those were practically her words. Had he taken them to heart that much, even if she might have thought better of them since then? What about this solar cell project? It couldn't be a coincidence that it was going to happen in Artemis.

While she was standing there staring at the screen, she heard a noise and looked up. Will was standing in the doorway.

"There you are. I was looking for you, and I thought you might have sneaked off to check your email," he said. He'd been looking for her? Why?

"Oh! You caught me. You know me, I can't put it down even for an evening." She laughed nervously. He smiled, like he knew that already.

"All right, that's not true," she said. "Actually I heard something at the party about WPD's restructuring and I just had to come and check it out. What's going on? Is everything OK?"

"Yeah, yeah, better than OK. Things are really good at WPD, in fact." He came a little closer. What did that look on his face mean? She couldn't read it, but it was intense, whatever it was.

"That's great. It's such a big change..."

"Well, you know I've been thinking about doing it for a long time."

"Right. Well...um, congratulations. Really, it's fantastic. I hope it works out great for you. And this project in Artemis..."

"Yeah, yeah, it looks like a great technology, lots of potential, and, uh, with the manufacturing base and technical know-how in the area, it seemed like a great match for our new 'Made in the USA' focus." He said this in his Captain of Industry voice.

"Wow, I'm just...amazed doesn't even begin to cover it. Totally blown away."

"Thanks." He paused. "Oh, I came looking for you because it's time for the toasts, and we're on."

"Oh, shit. I'd forgotten all about it." And she was almost disgusted to discover how disappointed she was that that was why he'd been looking for her. What the hell was wrong with her?

"I'm sure you'll think of something great to say," he said, as they headed back to the party.

A few minutes later, everyone gathered in the great room for toasts and well wishes. Lizzy was flushed, embarrassed that she had had to manhandle her mother again to get her to leave the video camera in the coatroom for the toasts. She was sure that everyone must have heard their raised voices. If they had, the hundred or so guests all had the grace to pretend they hadn't.

In his role as host, Will gave a thoughtful, well-rehearsed speech congratulating the pair and mentioning how pleased he was to see Charlie so happy and well-matched. Everyone cheered heartily and drank deeply.

Then it was Lizzy's turn to speak as the presumptive maid of honor. She was used to thinking and talking on her feet, but not, she realized, when she was emotionally twisted up in knots like tonight. She couldn't think of what to say, and this flustered her even more. She cleared her throat and looked around, which didn't help at all. Everywhere she looked were reminders of the parts of Will's life that she didn't know or understand, and of his unavailability. This huge apartment, the beautifully planned party that she could never in a million years have arranged...and even if he _had _changed how he did business because of something she'd said, this other stuff would never go away. She'd thought she couldn't feel any worse than she had when she'd arrived at the apartment that evening, but she'd been wrong. However, this was not the time for the nervous breakdown she so strongly desired to have.

She had to say _something_. With her free hand, she smoothed her hair back into its bun, and then wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. "Um...I'm Lizzy, Jane's sister. I...sorry, I'm feeling kind of _verklempt _this evening." Standing next to her, Jane smiled at her in support and took her hand, and a sympathetic murmur ran through the crowd.

"Ah hmm. For those of you who don't know my sister yet, Jane is the sweetest, kindest, smartest, most beautiful woman in the entire world."

Jane blushed, swatted at her with her free hand, and muttered, "Oh, stop it, Lizzy."

"Really, I mean it. But there aren't many _men _in the world clever enough, or brave enough, to take on a woman who's the whole package, like Janey is."

Someone in the crowd sang out, "are you strong enough to be my man?," and everyone laughed.

"Enter Charlie. Not only was Charlie smart enough to recognize how wonderful Jane is, he was brave and strong enough to just go for it, take a chance, when everything he'd ever wanted in a woman was right in front of him. And Janey-did I mention yet that she is brave and strong, too?-was brave enough and strong enough to see that he was the one for her, too, and to jump right in.

"Now, I will admit that _some _of us"-she cleared her throat and pointed with mock secrecy to her chest-"were concerned at first that maybe they were moving too fast." There were some scattered boos and hisses.

She scanned the crowd, and found herself looking straight at Will. Tears pricked her eyes. "But you know what? That's just fear talking. When you know, really know, that this person is the one, the way Janey and Charlie do, there's no room for fear. They're the real thing, and for the real thing, you just have to throw caution to the wind. So I say, here's to Janey and Charlie, throwing caution to the wind!"

"Throwing caution to the wind!" everyone toasted back.

Jane hugged her, and she hugged Charlie, and there were tears all around. Lizzy looked for Will, but guests were crowded around him, shaking his hand and saying thanks for the great party, as it was clear that things were going to break up.

Caroline, Louisa, and Gil were the first to leave, Louisa having pushed Caroline toward the door when she had raised her glass after Lizzy's toast as if she might make her own. The rest of the guests slowly found their way out, leaving just the Bennets, the Gardiners, Charlie and Will. After some searching, Lizzy found Lydia texting in a dark closet in the coatroom when she went in to get everyone's coats. Lydia seemed kind of slow and off-balance, and Lizzy wondered whether she'd somehow managed to get drunk even though she'd been in hiding all evening. She didn't smell like booze, though, so Lizzy let it pass and shooed her out, coat in hand, while Lizzy gathered the rest of the coats. A moment later, Will came in to help her, and together they carried everything into the foyer.

As they were walking, he asked, "I know that your family is staying the night in the city, but does anybody have to leave early in the morning?"

"No, I don't think so. Maddie and Ed and the girls are probably going to sightsee a little bit and hit the road later in the afternoon. Mom and Dad and Lydia are going to take off in the late morning, I think. Mom has some kind of thing tomorrow evening that she has to get back for."

"Well, I know it's kind of late to ask, but since you're all here...do you think you'd all like to have brunch tomorrow? Early-ish, maybe, so everyone can still do all of that? I know a nice place with great French toast, caramelized pecans...?" She could hear the hesitation in his voice.

"Um...that sounds great. Let's ask." Damn, what was wrong with her, looking for some excuse to prolong this agony?

And so it was settled that they would all meet at Maisy's Table, Uptown, at 9:30 the next morning. All the Bennets, the Gardiners and Charlie headed out the door to the elevator, waving and exclaiming, leaving Will in the doorway watching them go, the clanging of the caterers cleaning up behind him.

* * *

_Author's postscript: Did I remember to mention that this story is a fantasy? If you'd like, please take a moment to tell me what you thought about this version of Pemberley.  
_


	11. Chapter 11

_A/N: Thanks again to my wonderful betas, Jan and Barbara, for asking all the right questions and prodding me in the right directions. As always, any remaining disastrous errors in judgment are my own._

**Chapter 11**

Late February 2007

The next morning, Lizzy woke up spontaneously, as always, at 6:30, and went for a jog. She was ready for brunch early, really early, and she didn't want to ask herself too hard why. She got to Maisy's Table almost half an hour ahead of schedule. It was packed, with a long line of people waiting to be seated. She went to the front to put her name on the list and found that Will had made a reservation for them. How had he done that? They didn't take reservations. She went back to wait in the foyer for the rest of the party to arrive. To her surprise, Will showed up 20 minutes early.

"Hey, hi," he said, standing next to her.

"Hey, yourself. Great party last night. Hardly any vomiting into the planters or suspicious substances on the sheets, I hope?" God, why had she said that? Gross!

He smiled. "Hardly any. It was a pretty well-behaved crowd."

"Great, great. You never know with my family."

"Or mine, to tell you the truth," he said. He looked like he meant it, too. And from what she remembered hearing when she was at SCOTUS about his drunken, womanizing uncle, the Senator, it probably _was _true.

"Elizabeth," he said, "I wondered—"

Just then her phone rang. The ringtone was "Sweet Jane," the Cowboy Junkies version.

"I'm really sorry. That's Jane, and I probably should take it, don't you think?"

He nodded. "Yeah, see if they're running late or something."

So she answered the phone, and immediately wished she hadn't.

Jane, always so calm and levelheaded, was in full-on panic mode. "Lizzy, Lizzy, when we went to the hotel to get Mom and Dad and Lydia this morning, Lydia was gone. She had her own room, and when Mom went to wake her up, she wasn't there. It didn't look like she'd slept in the bed. There wasn't a note or anything. We've called and called, but her phone is turned off."

"Oh my God. Do you think she's just gone out and didn't bother to tell anyone?"

"No. She took all of her stuff, and we think she also stole some money out of Dad's wallet before she left. Lizzy, she could be anywhere."

"Shit, shit. Where are you? Are Ed and Maddie and the girls there with you?" Lizzy hunched over her phone so she could hear in the noisy waiting area.

"Yes, thank God, calming Mom down. We're in Mom and Dad's room."

"OK. I'm coming right now. You stay there until I get there, OK? Don't move." They signed off.

"What's wrong?" asked Will, his voice full of concern.

"Lydia's run away," she said succinctly. "Shit. Should have seen this coming. This must be why she was willing to come to the City. Shit." Bad, bad scenarios started running through her head. Shit. She was so stunned she could hardly move. "Will, I'm sorry. I have to go to the hotel."

"Yes, of course. I'll let them know to release our table. Do you want me to get you a cab first?"

"Um, oh...no, I think I can get there all right..." She felt turned around, disoriented. She wasn't sure where the door was, even though she was standing right in front of it.

"I'll get you a cab. Wait here for 15 seconds, and then I'll make sure you get to the hotel," he said firmly before dashing off to find the hostess and quickly returning to Lizzy's side.

In a daze, she let him guide her out the door, and out to the curb, and then into a taxi that stopped for them shortly thereafter.

During the ten-minute ride, she started to pull herself together a little after the initial shock had worn off. "Jesus, Lydia. She is _so _close to being able to leave home, and she goes and does this? Un-fucking-believable."

The taxi pulled up at the entrance to the Midtown Hilton, and they got out. Will had paid the fare before Lizzy could even remember they had to pay. They stood in the cold, windy drive silently for a moment.

He said, "I can't imagine your family will want a stranger around right now. But do you want me to take you up to their room? Make sure you get there safely?"

"No, no, I'm OK now, and I don't want to put you out. I'm really sorry about brunch. I'm really sorry about everything, Will. You've just been great. Thank you, for everything," she said, fast, starting to choke on her words. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. Then she turned and ran into the hotel, her long coat flapping behind her. If she had turned back, she would have seen see him standing there, watching her go through the revolving door, disappearing into the crowd inside.

Oh, God. Why did he have to be there to witness that little mental breakdown? she asked herself as she dialed Jane to ask, yet again, what the room number was.

Great, she thought as she headed for the express elevator. Well, that was the end of whatever secret, unacknowledged fantasies she'd been harboring about him. She had a drunk mother, an indifferent father, no wifely skills, and now, a runaway, probably drug-abusing sister. He'd surely had enough of that particular problem already in his life, a runaway, drug-abusing sister. She wished she hadn't gone to the party and let herself, however unconsciously, get her hopes up even the tiniest bit. How could she have been so stupid? Letting the smallest glimmer of interest or tiniest sign of warmth get her all worked up about him again, especially when she knew, _knew_, that they were all wrong for each other. Weren't they? Yes, they were. Damn it.

Things were chaotic in the hotel room, of course. Her mother alternated among completely freaking out, denying that they should be worried because surely Lydia would walk back through the door any second, and getting out her video camera to try to document everything. Finally Ed took the camera and stealthily removed the battery before giving it back to her. She didn't seem to notice that the camera wasn't working.

Charlie was taking and making phone calls, one after the other. Tom sat sulking in a high-backed chair in the corner by the window, watching the traffic go by 36 floors down. Sadie and Hannah were watching cartoons on TV. Lizzy tried to get Jane, Maddie, and Ed to tell her what had happened.

In the end, there wasn't much more to say than what Jane had already told her. Charlie's calls had included a call to the police, who said there was nothing they could do until she'd been gone for 24 hours.

Lizzy felt completely helpless. And of course they all were, in fact, helpless. What could they do? Start trolling the city parks? There were probably thousands of runaway kids in the City, and hundreds of places where Lydia might have gone. They'd never find her. Collectively, they all decided that everyone would check out of their hotel rooms. Maddie and Ed and the girls would stay the night at Jane's place, and Lillian and Tom would stay with Jane at Charlie's. For how long, nobody was sure. But Sadie and Hannah had to be back at school on Monday, Maddie had appointments with clients, and Tom had to be back on campus to teach class by Tuesday. Maybe Lydia would contact them and let them know that she was OK, at least.

But nothing happened. Lydia didn't call. Lizzy checked her email compulsively, just in case. They sat around in Charlie's apartment staring at each other for hours. They filed a missing persons report the next day, but the police didn't offer too much hope for a teenage runaway. Later that day, Maddie, Ed and the girls drove back to Boston. Lizzy went back home in the afternoon to get ready for work the next day. Tom went back to Artemis on Monday. Lillian stayed for a few more days with Jane and Charlie. And then, just nothing. Nothing. Lydia was gone.

The next week, Lizzy threw herself into her work because there wasn't anything else she could do. Plus, it took her mind off of things she didn't want to dwell on: Lydia, Will...What had he been about to ask her at Maisy's Table? Anyway, that ship had sailed.

And she had some help forgetting because of an emergency at work. The firm was defending _The New York Times _in a libel case, and she'd been working on it behind the scenes. But a new, junior partner assigned to the case had just had a serious car accident, and was in the hospital with complex fractures in both legs. He would be unable to do his share of the oral argument. As a mark of Lizzy's rising stature in the firm, she'd been asked by one of the senior partners to take his place. She would only be in the spotlight for a short time, but she really, really couldn't screw it up when it went to court the next week. This was the highest-profile case she'd had a chance to work on yet, and she knew it was kind of a test from the senior partner. So she gave it her all.

Then, two and a half weeks after Lydia had disappeared, at 2:30 on a Thursday morning after she'd only just gotten to sleep, her phone rang on the nightstand. It startled her and sent her sitting bolt upright. It was Lillian. "Lovey, they've found Lydia."

Lizzy grabbed a pen and paper and wrote down the facts as they spilled out of Lillian's mouth, in case she forgot them in her half-awake daze. She was in a hospital cross town from Lizzy. Someone had found her on the street somewhere, nobody had said where exactly, passed out, foaming at the mouth, half-dead from an overdose. Miraculously, her phone had not been stolen along with her bag and wallet, and the police had been able to use it to contact Lillian and Tom.

"We're coming as soon as we can, Lovey, but we need you and Jane to go down to the hospital and straighten some things out."

"OK, OK. I'll call Jane as soon as we hang up. Mom, you need to call Maddie and Ed, right now. Maddie will know what we need to do, or she'll know people who know."

"Lovey, it's the middle of the night. I'll call them in the morning."

"No, Mom, _now_. Do it now."

Within half an hour of the call, she was at the hospital, haggard and in her exercise clothes, sweaty from running through the whole damn hospital and getting lost for a while. Jane and Charlie weren't far behind. Lydia was in intensive care, having just been admitted there from the emergency room. After a while, the doctors let the three of them into Lydia's room, where she was lying still, eyes closed, horribly pale even though her white makeup had mostly been rubbed off. She'd been revived in the ER, but was now sleeping. She was stable. She would recover.

Lizzy and Jane clung to each other, and Charlie hugged them both. They all stood and looked at Lydia for a while. There wasn't anything they could do now. Lillian and Tom wouldn't be there for a few hours. So they sat, waiting for something to happen. They were pulled into "Hospital Time," that liminal state in which the simplest thing takes a couple of hours and the minutes pass agonizingly slowly, while at the same time you blink and discover that the whole day is gone.

Lizzy checked her phone and saw that it was already 7 o'clock. How had four hours gone by so quickly? Then she remembered.

"Shit, shit! Jane, I have to be in court in two hours. I have to go. I have to get home and get changed and get to court. I can't—I'm so sorry."

Jane lifted her head from Charlie's shoulder, and said, "Don't worry, we'll take care of her, Lizzy. She's safe now."

"I'm sorry, Janey. Thank you for being here with us, Charlie..." and she was off.

And two hours later, she was in court. It wasn't one of her more charismatic performances, but she was OK because she had prepared so well in the days before. But she had to turn off her phone, so she didn't know what was going on with Lydia. Even after her part of the arguments was done, she had to stay in the courtroom. During breaks, she snuck out to call and text Jane for updates. Finally, finally, the judge called it a day late in the afternoon. Then she had to head to the office for a re-hash of the day's events with her colleagues and preparation for the next day's arguments. She couldn't leave, but man, did she want to. This was horrible. This was awful. This was not to be borne.

Meanwhile, things at the hospital were happening fast. Lydia had woken up, but she wasn't saying a word about where she'd been, or with whom, or what had happened. Tom and Lillian had arrived. Maddie had flown in, leaving Ed and the girls at home. Jane and Charlie were there. Together, they were all talking through what would happen to Lydia next.

When she found a moment to sneak off and call Jane, she said, "Janey, I want to be there and help figure things out, but I just can't come right now. Oh, God, this is so awful, but I have to stay here."

"OK. Don't worry, Lizzy. We can manage without you."

And, in a way, that was really what Lizzy was afraid of. They were managing just fine without her. All the important things were happening, all the people she loved were making decisions about her sister's life. But she wasn't there to support them, or to help make any necessary legal decisions, or anything. She was in her office, where she always was, and life was going on just fine without her. This had to stop. This was the last time.

When she called Jane early that evening, some crucial decisions had been reached. When Lydia was discharged the next day, she was going to go straight into rehab. Somehow they had found a bed in a famous drug treatment center, Tranquility, in Connecticut. Lydia didn't want to go, but she was too out of it to put up much of a fight in the end. Lizzy heard all about it in bits and pieces from Jane and Maddie every hour as she worked late into the night at the office. She didn't have time to think about it right then, but something about this seemed off.

The next day Lillian, Tom, and Maddie took Lydia to Tranquility, after which everyone except Lydia went back home. Lizzy spent the day in court again, and then in the evening she went straight over to Jane's place to get all the details. Well, actually it was Charlie's place, since by now Jane had more or less moved in with him.

They told her all about the day before, and they just couldn't say enough about how Maddie had managed to get things arranged so quickly. She'd made and received a few phone calls, and, bam, they had gotten a bed for Lydia at Tranquility. She had also gotten the names of residential programs near Artemis and counselors in Artemis for after Lydia got out in six weeks, and a lot of other information and contacts.

"She was just amazing," said Charlie. "What a gem."

Something wasn't right here. Lizzy's Lawyer Spidey Senses were tingling all of a sudden. "Yeah, she _is _amazing. Um, did she tell you anything more about how this bed happened to materialize yesterday? I'm just saying, isn't that a little bit of a coincidence? That place is usually jam-packed with Real Housewives and former child stars."

"No, no," said Jane, "she didn't really say. I think she just called on, you know, her professional network, maybe?" Jane was so smart and sweet, but she wasn't very good at questioning authority.

"Huh. Huh. That's very interesting. You're sure she didn't say anything else about this?"

Jane and Charlie both shook their heads, like bobblehead dolls in unison. Well, Lizzy was sure there was something fishy going on here. This "open bed" thing was suspicious.

"Um, did anybody say anything about who is going to pay for six weeks at Tranquility? Mom and Dad have decent health insurance from the college, but I'm pretty sure that their lifetime maximum on inpatient substance abuse coverage will be met after about 15 minutes in that place. If the insurance company doesn't just refuse coverage altogether."

But they didn't have any answers.

In the taxi on her way home, heading Downtown from Charlie's place on the Upper West Side, she Googled "Tranquility" and "cost," and when she saw how much this was going to cost, she started muttering all the worst swear words she could think of. She had to call Maddie, right now.

"Hi Maddie, I'm sorry to call you so late. I hope I didn't wake you..."

"No, the girls are asleep, and Ed and I were just watching the news before we went to bed." Maddie sounded tired.

"Oh, good. So, thank you for helping us through all of this stuff with Lydia. You've just been incredible." Lizzy was itching to get to the point.

"Oh, I didn't do much. And anyway, of course I'm happy to do what I can. It's family, Lizzy."

"No, really, it was unbelievable that you were able to get a bed for Lydia on such short notice."

"Well, just good luck, I guess." Maddie was starting to sound a little uncomfortable, and Lizzy couldn't tell if she was simply embarrassed at being thanked profusely, or if there was something else going on. So she decided to go for the jugular. She also knew that Maddie could not lie. She was a congenital truth-teller.

"Wow, what a coincidence. So, do you know somebody who works there or something?"

"Ah, no, I don't, but I know somebody who knows somebody. You know."

"That's great. Who's that? A classmate from Harvard Med School or something?"

"No, someone I know in New York."

"A colleague?"

"No, not exactly."

"What is this person's name, Maddie?"

"I really can't say."

"What is going on Maddie? How did you get her a bed? Why there? Who is paying for it? I don't see how Mom and Dad could manage it without selling the house, and even that might not be enough. I looked it up. It's about $100,000 for six weeks. They don't accept any kind of insurance. Are you and Ed paying for it? Please tell me you aren't. How will Sadie and Hannah go to college if you spend your savings on this? Please don't do this. Stupid Lydia..." She was really getting worked up now.

The taxi pulled up at her place and she handed the driver a twenty and hoped it was enough. It must have been since he drove away after she got out of the car, focused on her phone.

"No, no, Lizzy. We're not. It's not that. Please don't worry. I just...I promised I wouldn't say."

"What do you mean? Promised who?" she squawked, standing there on the street, afraid to move in case she missed what Maddie had to say. Had somebody done something terrible to Lydia, leaving her for dead on the street, and was now feeling guilty and trying to buy their silence by getting her treatment? That was ridiculous, melodrama, stupider than those legal shows on television that got everything about the justice system wrong.

"Will Darcy."

"_Will Darcy_?" The phone slipped out of her hand and hit the pavement, skittering along the sidewalk. She picked it up from its resting place halfway under a black plastic garbage bag, wiped some of the filth off of it, and said, "I'm sorry, I think I might have misheard you. Did you say, Will Darcy?"

"Yes." And then the whole story came out, as Lizzy unlocked the door, went upstairs to her apartment, and sat on her yucky old sofa in the living room in the dark while she listened. When Maddie and Will had been talking at the engagement party, they'd exchanged cards, out of professional courtesy, or maybe simply out of habit. And right after he'd left Lizzy at the hotel, he had called Maddie, to ask if he could be of help somehow in looking for Lydia, or in putting the family in touch with the right authorities. He knew how to do this because he had looked for Georgie so many times, Lizzy realized. He had asked Maddie to send him a photo of Lydia, and he had circulated it at homeless shelters, at-risk youth centers, methadone clinics, needle exchanges, food pantries, any place that Lydia might go if she was living on the street. He hadn't found, her, though. In the end it was the police who had discovered her crashed out in an alley in the Bowery.

Maddie had called and told him when they'd found Lydia, and he had called in all his chips to get the bed at Tranquility right away, and probably paid a lot extra to get it so soon, too.

"Oh, no, he's paying for it...?" Shit. How was she going to repay him? By working for three more years at DeWitt?

And he'd gotten all the information about continuing treatment for Lydia back in Artemis after she was released from Tranquility, too. God, he was too good. What was she going to do?

"Yes, and that's the main reason he didn't want the family to know. He said he'd been through something similar with his sister, and he didn't want us to have financial worries over it in addition to all the rest of it. What a nice young man you've got there."

"What? He's not my young man. Who the hell does he think he is, just giving us a hundred K?"

"Lizzy, he did more than that. He really got his hands dirty helping to look for her. He's a keeper, I'd say."

"God! How many times do I have to say it? OK, I will admit, and if you tell anyone else I'll absolutely deny it, that we were seeing each other for a while. But we broke up ages ago, and barring some kind of personality transplant procedure on both of us, there is no way we're getting back together."

"How can you be so sure?" Maddie asked, switching easily into counseling mode. Lizzy didn't answer. "Do you like him? Let's start with that."

"Yes, but we just want different things. He wants me to be someone I'm not, or maybe it's more accurate to say that he wants someone I'm not. I don't see a way to fix that."

Lizzy slumped back on the sofa and watched the light of the neon sign across the street flashing on the dark ceiling.

"OK, well, either he is the most generous, magnanimous man in the world, or there may be some, you know, _feelings_-type things going on here. I know you like to steer clear of all that, Lizzy, but one of these days you're going to have to stop hiding yourself in your work and start dealing with feelings. That's an important part of life, too, maybe even more important."

"Yes, actually, I am fully aware of that. All too aware, since this whole thing with Lydia. And...also since Will. I love working, but I need more out of life than that, I think."

"Hmm. That's a big step for you to say that. So, what are you going to do about it?"

"Still thinking. Still thinking. I'll get back to you about that."

"OK. Well, about Will, please don't tell him I told you about the money, if you can possibly help it."

"I'll do my best. Thanks, Maddie, for everything. Love to Ed," and they hung up.

Lizzy lay awake in bed most of the night, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sounds of her downstairs neighbor's Battlestar Galactica marathon. What the hell was she going to do?


	12. Chapter 12

_A/N: As always, thanks to Barbara and Jan for their amazing beta skills. Extra special thanks to Jan for keeping me from going seriously astray with this chapter—I swung and missed badly the first time through. It may still not be a home run, but hopefully it's at least a base hit._

**Chapter 12**

March 2007

The next morning, Lizzy came to groggily with visions of Cylons dancing in her head(1). Cars were honking at each other outside her window, and she could hear two guys yelling at each other in the street, "Fuck you!" "No, fuck you! Learn to fucking drive, moron!" In other words, it was a typical Saturday morning in her neighborhood.

But actually it wasn't a typical Saturday morning, because instead of going straight to the office, she sat down on her grotty sofa, stared at her BlackBerry for about five minutes, and then made a phone call to Will. He answered on the seventh ring, just as she was getting mentally prepared to leave a message.

"Hello?" He was breathing heavily.

"Oh! Sorry, I thought you weren't going to pick up."

"Elizabeth?"

"Yeah, sorry, sorry. Is this a bad time?" The sound of his breathing flooded her mind with images of how they'd spent weekend mornings together. She wished she'd waited till later in the day to call, because it sure sounded like he was similarly engaged right now. Shit. The knife in her gut twisted a little more.

"No, no, I'm playing squash with an investor, and we were just sitting down to take a short break. What's up?" Squash at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning. Naturally. She could hear echoes of balls rocketing around in the background now that she was paying attention. Thank God. The tension in her neck decreased marginally.

"Um...we need to talk. Are you free at all later today? Lunch, maybe, or coffee...?"

"Hang on." She heard him pushing some buttons on his BlackBerry and various other muffled noises as he talked to someone, and then he came back on the line and said, "OK, I could move some things around and meet you for lunch at 12:30. But I only have about 45 minutes. Sound all right?"

"Yes, great. Where?"

"I'll be Uptown. That work for you?"

"Yes." She wasn't sure if he wanted her to suggest somewhere to go, and anyway she couldn't think of any restaurant that wasn't freighted with some sort of baggage from their past together.

Fortunately, he had an idea. "Umm...there's a sort of old-fashioned sandwich place close to my apartment, Stella's. Does that sound all right?"

"Yeah, sure. Stella's, 12:30?"

"See you then."

* * *

As it turned out, Stella's was more like a slightly faded tea room, with chintz wallpaper and window coverings, full of elderly rich women, heavily made up and wearing Chanel blouses. When she blew into the restaurant, red-nosed from the chilly spring wind, Will was already there, at a table right in the middle of the room. They were probably the only customers under 70. He stood up and stepped forward to give her the _de rigeur _kiss-kiss-kiss on the cheeks, but she was flustered and went right instead of left, so they bumped noses. Shit.

"Sorry," she said, taking off her jacket and knit hat and hanging them on the back of her chair. She noticed he looked good, dressed in the standard business casual uniform of a button-down and chinos for the weekend, his wavy hair a little messy from the wind.

"Interesting place," she commented, sitting down.

"Yeah. I used to come here with my grandmother, back in the day. I recommend the tuna salad."

The waitress, a white woman in her 60s wearing a pink uniform and with hands gnarled by arthritis, took their orders, and limped off to the kitchen.

Lizzy didn't know how to get started with what she wanted to say. She could hardly look at him. They made a little small talk about squash and work, and, very soon, their sandwiches appeared, little things on white bread with the crusts cut off, fit for the appetites and tastes of the elderly women around them. But Lizzy really didn't feel like eating, anyway.

Finally she couldn't take the awkwardness anymore, so she stopped picking at her sandwich and took a deep breath, mentally apologizing to Maddie as she did.

"Look, Will. I just have to come right out and say this. I know about Tranquility, and I know about what you did to help us find Lydia."

"Oh, God. Maddie promised she wouldn't say anything." He was clearly very unhappy about this development. He put down his practically untasted sandwich, too.

"She did her best, but resistance was futile in the face of my Borg-like cross-examination skills. Anyway, that's not the point. The point is...well, there are two points. One, thank you very, very much for your help. And two, the money. We can't accept it." Lizzy was speaking quietly but intensely, trying to make herself heard over the din of chatter, but not to be overheard by the clearly all-too-interested ears around them.

"Elizabeth..."

"No, categorically, no. I wouldn't ask to borrow five dollars from you or anybody else, and I sure as hell am not going to take a hundred thousand freaking dollars from you!" she flared at him. "Sorry." She knew she'd gotten too loud.

He sighed and slumped down in his seat. "This is why I didn't want you to know about it. I knew you'd say this."

"Why did you do this, Will?"

"I had to pay the money up front to get the room. I can't get it back. Non-refundable."

"Then I'll pay you back. I can't give it to you all at once, but I'll pay you back, every cent."

"No." He said this very firmly, and sat back up, determined.

"No? What do you mean, _no_?" She leaned forward, mad. How dare he?

"I don't want the money back, and I won't take it if you try to give it to me. You don't owe me anything. I want you to believe that." He didn't cross his arms in front of his chest, but he might as well have because he was giving off that vibe.

She knew her stubbornness could give his a run for its money. "I repeat, why did you do this, Will?"

He was irritated now. "Because it's the best thing for Lydia. And, truth be told, because I wish that I had sent Georgie there at the first sign of trouble. They really know what they're doing." His voice softened. "And I don't want to see you lose your sister the way I lost mine." She could see that his eyes were a little moist as he said it.

In the face of this, she suddenly had to fight back her own tears. "Well, how can I argue against that?" She looked away for a minute, and then came back at him, lurching from tears back to anger, biting out the words. "But I still don't see why. In what way, shape, or form is this any of your business? I mean, thank you, thank you very much for getting Lydia into the best treatment facility. I don't even know how to begin telling you how grateful I am to you for saving my stupid, screwed-up sister."

Still pretty worked up, she went on, "But I, we, can't take it. I know you said you wouldn't accept money from me, but I just can't NOT pay you back. It wouldn't be right. And now your help has committed me and my family to something that we can't possibly, in a million years, pay for. Well, OK, I can pay for it, but only if I work at DeWitt for another two or three years. And I just don't think I can do that. I have to get out of there. It's killing me."

By now her anger had mostly burned out, and despair was setting in. She covered her face with her hands so he wouldn't see the unhappy flush deepening. The women at the table next to them were following the conversation with open curiosity by now. Evidently nothing this exciting had happened at Stella's in quite some time.

He saw her distress, and reached out a hand that didn't quite touch her. Softly, he said, "Elizabeth, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you in a difficult spot. Really, I was trying to do exactly the opposite."

Looking at him again, her voice low and fierce, she said, "Don't you dare apologize for doing something so amazingly kind and caring and...I don't even know what else to call it."

"OK, now I'm confused. I don't understand if you're angry with me or not." The wrinkle he got between his eyebrows when he was really confused appeared.

"_You're _confused! I don't know what the hell to think." She wiped her nose and eyes with her cloth napkin. "God, I'm so mad at you. Why are you doing these incredible things for me and my family, after the way I treated you?"

"Well, at the risk of pissing you off even more, because I love you. I told you that before," he said more softly, "and it's still true, although I hesitate to bring it up for obvious reasons. And I won't mention it again if you still feel the same way as before." The last part came out quietly, almost inaudibly, over the clinking of dishes and the buzz of conversation.

She felt a slow unfurling of something in her chest that had been clenched tight for a long, long time. She had never thought he had any nefarious motives, hadn't even been able to imagine what they might have been. In a little corner of her heart, maybe she had secretly hoped that this was what it was, why he had done it. She knew she'd been too hard on him, making him say it this way. It was time for her to bite the bullet. So she clutched her napkin a little tighter, shook her head, and tried to be brave, to throw caution to the wind.

"No, no, I don't feel the same way. I'm not sure I ever felt that way, actually. It just took me a while to figure things out," she choked out. She took a deep breath and reached out to take his hand, fisted up on the tabletop. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to say, I love you, too, and I think I have all along."

"Really?" he asked, a huge, incredulous smile blooming on his face. "Seriously?"

She nodded and gave him a crooked, slightly teary smile.

"You don't know how incredibly glad I am to hear that. Unbelievable. I thought for sure you hated me after I acted like such a jerk." He leaned closer and reached out to put his other hand on top of hers. She turned her hand over and squeezed his tight.

A little haltingly, she said, "No, really, I said so many awful, awful things that I regretted as soon as I could think straight again. Nobody deserves that kind of treatment. I'm really sorry."

He shook his head in denial. "For what? You didn't say anything I didn't absolutely deserve."

"That's not true at all," she replied. He protested, but she shook him off. "Maybe we can argue later about who was the bigger jerk."

He looked at her silently for a minute with a kind of joy she didn't think she'd ever seen in him before. She hoped he could see how moved she was, too.

With a wry twitch of his lips, he said, "I thought I was being so clever, but I picked totally the wrong place for us to have lunch."

"Why's that? It's fine." If a little weird with all the cupped ears turned in their direction.

"Well, I thought you were probably going to yell at me, about _something_, I didn't know what. So I picked a public place where we couldn't make a big scene. And now all I want to do is kiss the hell out of you, but I can't do it because my nosy neighbor Mrs. Kendrick and her entire bridge club are watching us."

She laughed. "What a tangled web we weave, eh?" She paused for a moment and squeezed his hand again. "You know, I suddenly have this terrible urge to go powder my nose and make sure my seams are straight. Do you think you might be able to help me find the cloakroom?" He looked a little confused, but she knew what she was talking about.

Places like this, frequented by a certain generation of women, always had a little space for "freshening up." She took him by the hand and led him to the back of the restaurant in search of it. And sure enough, there was the empty cloakroom, with a big lighted mirror on the wall behind a narrow marble counter, upholstered stools slid under it, and, tucked in the corner, a tall lacquered screen for privacy when one needed to do womanly business. And boy, did she ever have some of that now.

"I believe you said something about kissing the hell out of me?" she asked, and so he did. It was a big, messy, passionate kiss full of joy and enthusiasm and pent-up longing. Finally, he pulled away to look at her, just to see her again in the dimness.

She whispered, "I missed you so much."

He rested his forehead against hers. "Me, too. You'll never know how much."

Unfortunately, their oasis of calm didn't last. The approach of noisy, vain women who refused to wear hearing aids, the opening of doors, and a loud beeping noise from Will's pocket all intruded at once.

"Oh, crap. What time is it?" He fumbled around to get his phone, and finally pulled it out, turning his trouser pocket inside out in the process. "Shit. I'm supposed to have an appointment with an investor back at the office in 15 minutes."

She nodded. "It's OK. We knew we didn't have much time." She decided throw caution to the wind one more time since it had worked so well last time. "Um, are you free for dinner tonight? We still have a lot to talk about, I think."

"If I'm not now, I'll get free. Actually I think I should be done about five."

"Come over to my place after your meeting?" she asked.

"Or, come to mine at, say, 5:30, and we can go for a walk in the park?" This was reasonable. He lived across the street from Central Park, after all, while she lived across the street from a tattoo parlor.

"Sounds good."

They made their way back to their table, where they stood close to each other, fingers touching.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. I'm already going to be late," he said, meeting her eyes when she finally looked up from their hands.

"I know," she said, but neither of them moved to go anywhere. She knew they needed to be practical, but she really, really didn't feel like it. So they stood like this for a few more moments looking at each other before she said, "You know you can't keep him or her waiting."

"Him. I know." He leaned toward her and she closed her eyes and kissed him hard when she felt his lips touch hers. She tasted the sweet elixir of him, of Will, and once more her eyes stung with tears.

Then he fumbled for his wallet, while she waved him off, saying "No, no, you go on. I'll get this. You can get dinner."

"OK. See you at 5:30." He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, bent down to kiss her quickly one more time, and was off. She sat quietly at the table for a while, listening to the women around her tittering and gossiping and speculating. She thought, for the first time in a long, long time, that maybe things were about to start looking up.

Then she pulled herself together, paid the bill, left a big tip even though they hadn't seen the waitress since she'd brought their sandwiches, and headed Downtown to do some work before getting herself ready for a walk in the park.

Later that afternoon, in the cab on the way back Uptown, Lizzy started to feel nervous again. It was great—wonderful—that she and Will had come to this new understanding. But she was still worried about some of the important things they hadn't talked through yet. She knew she loved him, and she could accept that he still loved her, even if she couldn't quite understand why. But she wasn't totally clear on whether he meant he was ready to accept her the way she was, warts and all, work-obsessed and domestically impaired. She hoped so, with all her heart. Because if he wasn't, no matter how much they loved each other, it just wouldn't work out between them. It was a dealbreaker for her.

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) Cylons are nasty cybernetic beings featured in both the 1970s and 2000s versions of the science fiction show Battlestar Galactica. But you probably already knew that. Lizzy's downstairs neighbor was having a BG marathon the night before this chapter starts.


	13. Chapter 13

_A/N: Thanks as always to the brilliant, the beautiful, the awesome Jan and Barbara for their gifts of fantastic beta-ing skills and hard work on this chapter._ _Thanks also to those of you who have left such kind comments. I hope you enjoy this chapter, too.  
_

**Chapter 13**

When Will came rushing into the lobby of his building at 5:37, Lizzy was sitting in the lobby chatting with David, the elderly Dominican doorman, about his grandkids. She was wearing a sweater and wool skirt with tights against the cold, hat and coat in hand, ready for a walk in the park.

"I'm so sorry," Will said. "The guy would just not stop talking. I think he was looking for any excuse not to go home. Then I got stuck in traffic coming back Uptown."

"Don't worry about it," Lizzy said, standing and nodding toward David. He was smiling at her out from under his doorman's cap, which he kept pulled down pretty low.

"It was great talking to you, David. Take care."

"You, too, Lizzy." David said.

Will said he needed to go change his clothes, so they took the beautiful brass-doored elevator up to his floor. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I meant to get here earlier so I could get ready before you arrived." He rubbed his slightly stubbly chin.

She stepped closer and put her hand in his. "It's OK. I do understand, you know."

"Yeah, I know you do." He leaned down and kissed her, but she could feel herself holding back.

They awkwardly parted inside. She didn't feel comfortable just yet picking up where they had left off all those months ago, so she didn't follow him when he headed off to his bedroom to change. Instead, she sat in the living room, feeling sheepish as she looked at the now-closed double doors leading off to the space where the party had been. She read her email to pass the time, even though she had no desire at all to do so. A few minutes later he came back out, in jeans, fleece, and light hiking boots, and grabbed a big wool overcoat from the front closet. They were off.

It was a blustery March evening, and the temperature was beginning to drop as the sun was going down. Light snow flurries had been expected this evening, and indeed they had arrived, although the snow probably wouldn't stick. The sky was darkening as they went outside and crossed Fifth Avenue to Central Park, hand in hand. There were still joggers out, some pushing strollers; other people walked dogs, or herded their children along the sidewalk after an afternoon in the park, scurrying home with takeout food bags. They were doing the normal end-of-the-day routines that Will and Lizzy usually missed because they were at the office at this time.

They decided to walk toward the Central Park Lake, taking the path that snaked past the fountain to get there, ambling along in silence.

"Are you OK? You seem kind of quiet," he ventured.

"Yeah, sorry, not trying to be mysterious. Just trying to think about how to talk to you about some stuff." She held his hand a little tighter.

"For example, why I was such a presumptuous asshole?" he asked drily, the quirky smile making an appearance.

She smiled back at him. "Well, we could start with that, but I have a few specific apologies I'd like to make, too."

He looked puzzled. "Really? I don't think so, honestly."

"No, no, I mean it. I'm really sorry about how mean I was. You told me you loved me, and I stomped all over your heart. Nobody deserves that, least of all someone as kind and caring as you." This just scratched the surface of her regret and sorrow about that evening, but at least it was a start.

He shook his head. "Honestly, I think I did deserve it, considering the way I absolutely failed to ask your opinion about _anything_, and the stupid assumptions I was making about your feelings."

She didn't want to let him take this all upon himself. "I don't know...Charlotte made me see that a lot of your assumptions weren't unreasonable readings of some things I'd said."

He looked off, angry with himself. "I think I was just hearing what I wanted or expected to hear."

"Well, I sure wasn't listening to you all along, either. And, I was just as dismissive of your career as you were of mine. That was totally unfair of me."

She paused, gathering her thoughts, and then went on, "I know that you put your heart and soul into WPD, and that it's a big organization a lot of people depend on, and I dismissed all that with some stupid political platitudes. I guess I didn't get that until I read your letter, and I'm sorry. Of all people, I should understand how important someone's work can be to them, and treat that with respect. What a hypocrite I am." She looked down at the ground, where snowflakes were melting as they hit the sidewalk.

He shook his head. "No, you're not. Work is important to both of us, and so what we do, and the value it has to society, is actually incredibly significant, because it's a big part of how we judge our worth as people." He said this with some force, and, looking up, she could tell from the fire in his eyes that this was a big deal to him.

With asperity, she said, "If that's the case, then who the hell was I to criticize you for being some kind of soulless corporate monster, when I work for The Man just as much as you do? Like I said, what a hypocrite I am. And I'm so sorry for how I blamed you for the Safe & Lock deal. I shouldn't have said anything about it without all the information." She was thoroughly ashamed of herself.

"Well, I think this is probably something we could debate for a long time," he said wryly, squeezing her hand. "I also think that this is sidetracking us from the most material point, which is that I was an idiot and I shouldn't have said any of that complete bullshit about your giving up your career."

He stopped, pain and regret in his eyes, and took both of her hands in his. She tightened hers in reassurance. "I just can't believe how stupid I was. You were right—I wasn't thinking about you at all, and what was important to you, just about what some imaginary, abstract woman might want. You know, who wouldn't want to lead a life of luxury and become a socialite? Well, that's easy. _You _wouldn't. The only real, live woman whose opinion I really cared about."

She reached up, and touched the side of his face, thinking her heart might burst, just because he really _did _get her. But did she get him the same way? She realized she needed to know more, even though she certainly didn't want to cross-examine him at this particular moment.

In a small voice, growing stronger, she said, "I have to admit, I was a little mystified by that. You always took me seriously, you never treated me like you thought my job was trivial or unimportant, or like _I _was trivial or unimportant. So where did that all come from?" They started walking again, slowly, arm in arm.

He nodded, and said thoughtfully, "Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot, trying to figure that out. I can see now that it was a lot of things."

"You mentioned your parents, once?" she said with some caution, nervous to bring them up because he had never talked about them before.

But he nodded again and seemed comfortable enough with it. "Right. I don't know why, exactly, since they were such crappy role models for how to have a functional relationship, but there it is..." he trailed off.

"Ah. I sense that could be a whole other topic of discussion."

"True, true..." Taking a deep, unhappy breath, he said, "For now, long story short, you know, my mom was a teenager when my grandfather was so big in politics, and so she was on display all the time, and she got kind of...um, narcissistic. So she did all kinds of caring things, but a lot of the time it felt like it was more for other people's consumption than for real. Dad wanted what I can see now was a trophy wife, to add to the collection of accomplishments on his shelf. But mostly he cared about money. Not a good combination. He cheated, and she drank. I finally started to see some of this in family therapy with Georgie, but I guess I didn't start to put it together with my own behavior until you called me on it." He was so earnest, his eyes shining in the reflected light.

"I'm sorry," she said gently, glad he had told her this much, opened up to her this way. "I can totally relate to the narcissistic mother thing, obviously, for what it's worth."

He chuckled, but wisely didn't comment on Lillian's behavior at the engagement party. "You know, I think another reason I was thinking that way may be that most of my peers, the other CEOs, a lot of the investors, too, are twenty, thirty years older than me, a different generation, and that's just how they organize their lives. But it's a different world now. I really think Louisa was right that night last spring when she said I had quote unquote antiquated ideas about the family." He made air quotes with his fingers and made a silly face.

Lizzy laughed at the silly face and said, "Welcome to the 21st century, Ichabod Crane."

He laughed, too, and then resumed his customary stoic demeanor. "Seriously, in our generation, that's not how we live, but that's how the men—and it _is _99% men, the CEOs—I work with do. I think maybe I just thought that's what I had to do, as part of the deal."

She nodded in acknowledgement. "I can understand that. And from what I hear, it's really hard to make things work when a couple doesn't clearly prioritize one career over the other." Was this what he would want, she wondered? Her stomach hurt a little just thinking about it.

No, to her great relief, apparently it wasn't what he wanted, because he shook his head and said firmly, "Maybe so, but that doesn't make it right. You know, what you said that night _was _right, though. I was incredibly selfish. It was all about me and my needs, my career, my position, or whatever you want to call it."

Determined not to let him take all the blame, she pushed back, "You weren't the only one, you know. I wasn't giving you an inch. I'm ashamed at how little I even tried to understand your point of view."

Forcefully, he responded, "No, no. I think you're entitled to stand up for yourself, and say, 'hey, don't erase me.' And I'm really glad you did. You made me take a good look at myself, and I didn't like what I saw."

"Me, too. Your message, especially, thinking about it later...it just made me realize how much growing up I still have to do. I had no idea the kind of hell you'd been going through with your sister. I'm so sorry, Will." She choked up a little and looked up at him, stroking his arm.

"Thanks." He smiled a little, his eyes tinged with sadness.

By now they'd reached the lake and walked a little way around it. They stopped and looked around. It was completely dark now, and the gentle fall of snow glittered in the lamplight.

She continued, softly, regretfully, "And another thing about your e-mail...it made me realize that I hardly knew you. I mean, I knew some things about you that most other people probably don't, like that you are really not a morning person, and that you studied Chinese in college, but I didn't really know you. I'm not sure I even tried to, then. But afterwards, and especially after I read your message, I thought...well, I was so sure you wouldn't want anything to do with me, and that we could never be together because we wanted different things..." She drifted off, remembering how bereft she'd felt.

He started to protest, but she kept going, her voice a little tremulous. "But anyway, the point is that I wished I had known you better, really seen you, then. And I want to know you now, as well as I can."

"I feel the same way." He put his arms around her and they embraced, lightly, for a few moments. She pulled back to look at him, her hands still on his arms. The streetlight behind him, glowing orange, lit up the snowflakes in his hair, and she could see snowflakes catching on his dark lashes and settling on his broad shoulders. She suddenly felt a rush of gratitude and wonder that in spite of it all, this glorious man still loved her. She opened her mouth to say so, if she could only find the words. Then she looked once more at his eyes and saw that he was feeling something powerful, too, that he was as moved as she was. She shivered, overcome with emotion. He opened his coat and pulled her inside, holding her warm against his racing heart and kissing her temple while she slipped her arms around his waist.

"I love you," he whispered with real feeling.

"I love you, too," she whispered back. She kissed his cheek and then put her head back on his shoulder. After a while, he looked down, and saw tears trickling down her cheek.

"Hey, hey, shhh, don't cry. Why are you crying? Isn't this a good thing?" He sounded a little panicked as he brushed the tears away with the back of his hand.

"No, no, everything's good. I'm sorry, I just...the last few months, my emotions have been kind of close to the surface, you know?" She stepped back a little and swiped at her tears with the back of her gloved hand. "It's really frustrating, actually. You know I _never _cry, and now I can't seem to turn it off sometimes."

He pulled her back toward him and put his cheek against her head, reassuring her. "Hey, it's all right. Don't be embarrassed. You don't have to be Iron Woman all the time."

"Well, yes I do, at work. Can you imagine what would happen if I cried at the office? The kiss of death."

"But you're not at work, and it doesn't matter. It's OK to let yourself feel things," he soothed, stroking her back.

She peered up at him with one eye before putting her head back down on his shoulder. "Just how much therapy have you had, young man?"

"You know I'm right, though." He said this very firmly, not going along with her joke.

She relaxed and relented. "Yes, I do. Aunt Maddie has been after me about this for ages. For the last ten years she's been telling me I need to stop rationalizing so much, and start feeling more. And, I have to say I've had a lot of what she calls Big Feelings since October."

"And how do you _feel _about that?" he asked, doing his best Freud imitation.

She leaned back against his arms and looked him in the eye. "Good. I feel good. I feel a little scared. But ready to step into the abyss." And so she did. She leaned close to him, squeezed her arms around his waist, stood on her toes, reached up, closed her eyes, felt his lips come down to meet hers, and stepped right off. No ropes, no net, no thinking too much, she just let herself go, and really feel. And it felt really, really good.

Some time later, just as she was finding it harder and harder to ignore the cold creeping through her tights and the increasing soddenness of her hat in spite of the warmth and pleasure she was getting from making out with Will like a lusty teenager, she heard a huge growl emanating from his midsection.

She detached herself long enough to say, "Has a tiger escaped from the zoo or something?"

If his face hadn't already been rather pink, he would have blushed. "No, I guess I'm just hungry. Sorry."

"Have you had anything at all since the lunch you didn't eat?" she asked, pretending to scold.

"I think I ate a granola bar this afternoon at the office. Or, maybe not..." he trailed off, his low blood sugar apparently catching up with him.

"Come on. Let's get some food in you before you pass out. Plus, we'd better get out of the park before the muggers come out to play."

He laughed and nodded. She buttoned up his coat for him and took his hand, and they dashed safely back to the civilization of Fifth Avenue through the sparkling snow.

Later, after they had demolished some adequate, but not, according to Will, very authentic, sushi and various other bar-food side-dishes from a Japanese place down the street, they dimmed the lamps in the living room and sat hand in hand on the sofa, watching the lights twinkling in the park.

"Will, there's something I wanted to ask you. WPD's restructuring, and the investment in solar tech in Artemis..." She looked at him for some help.

"Did I do it for you? In part, yes, of course. Also for me and for the company. I...didn't like how I looked through your eyes, how the company was doing more harm than good. I guess it gave me a swift kick in the ass, and a reason to do some of the things I'd wanted to do for a long time but didn't have the guts to try before. But I also really believe in the new direction. I want to be part of changing the economy and making it grow in a more sustainable way, showing we can protect the environment and do it profitably."

"Was it hard to make it happen?"

"Some members of the board put up a bit of a fight. But I own a controlling interest in the company, so..." he shrugged and let her fill in the blanks. She bet it probably hadn't been quite as easy as all that.

"And what about the Artemis part?"

He laughed. "OK, you got me there. That was...I was trying to undo some of the damage from the Safe & Lock deal. I mean, you can't unring that bell, but this way maybe we can build a better future for the people there."

She put her arms around him. "God, you are so good. In every way imaginable. I totally don't deserve you."

"Of course you do," he replied, low and full of feeling.

She held on tight, and they sat silently for a few minutes, watching the lights and the cars and the scurrying people, as the rightness of being together settled on them.

"Damn fine view of the park you have here, Darcy," she said in her best Mr.-Moneybags-from-Monopoly voice.

"Yeah, it's great," he said, like he didn't really mean it, "but I prefer this one," looking at her, and this time much more convincingly.

"Oh, Mr. Darcy," she said, switching to her Scarlett O'Hara voice, "I do believe you are flirting with me."

He laughed and dived for her. A few minutes later Lizzy found herself in a pose she remembered from long ago—stretched out on top of him, her hand up his shirt, and her skirt hiked up higher than she'd realized. He had always liked this because it gave him full access. She lifted up her head and looked at his eyes, their dark depths sparkling a little in the light from outside.

"Will you stay tonight?" he whispered.

"Wild horses..." she whispered back, but he kissed her before she could finish, _couldn't drag me away_.

They stumbled, disheveled, down the long, dark hallway to his bedroom, lit only by the reflections of the snow and streetlights outside the uncovered window. She slipped out of her clothes and under the covers into his warm, welcoming embrace.

"Oh, thank God," she breathed, as surges of relief and love crashed over her, through her, while she pressed close.

She watched his eyes, watched the shadow of his long lashes against his cheek when he closed them in pleasure at her softness. She watched his hands, the long, slender, strong fingers, as they curled and uncurled, clutching at the sheets, holding on. She watched him shiver as she drew a single finger down the long, lean line of him, searching for places of remembered bliss and new joy, treasuring his sighs as she inscribed her love on his skin.

She also watched him watching her, saw him smile when her breath suddenly caught, saw him move to kiss a spot that clenched of its own accord, saw him set out in hot pursuit when her flesh beckoned, saw him coil tighter in response to her murmurs and whispers of love.

Finally the booming waves tossed them ashore, amidst sighs and gentle calls. Then they fell clasped together, her leg slung over his. Her hand was laced in his, tight over his heart, and they lay, eye to eye, in a new, deep, still place, a land where they'd never been before.

"I just don't know the words to tell you..." she whispered, threading her fingers gently through his dark locks, golden-tipped in the reflected light. "But I want you to know—"

"It's OK, you don't have to say—"

"No, I need you to know. I need to say it," and she stroked his cheek, whispering her love of his kindness, caring, courage, strength, diligence, humor, intelligence, responsibility, passion, beauty...

He wiped his eyes and murmured, "I think you've got it wrong..." and he whispered his love of her wit, dedication, love of family, imagination, grace, power, strength of mind, passion, beauty...

"I don't think I am all those things...but if I can be just a fraction of that in your eyes, then I'll be happy," she said.

"Me, too. Something to aspire to." He looked so sincere. Her heart swelled, and they gazed at each other in teary, smiling silence for some time.

At length, she felt obliged to tease him out of his contemplative state. She couldn't stay serious for long.

"Oh, don't be so modest. I'm sure you've heard about it from plenty of people, women, before."

He shook his head. "But I don't care what anybody else thinks. Just you."

"Oh, you've got it, baby. In spades. Don't make me say it again." She wagged her finger at him.

He grinned at her. "Tough guy, huh? I guess I forgot to say how much I love your delicate, feminine side."

"Yeah, you forgot to mention that part," she said drily.

"Seriously. I don't think you have any idea how sexy you are." He caressed her hip to illustrate.

She gestured at her naked body. "What, this old thing?"

"The first time I saw you in that bathing suit in the hot tub at Charlie's, I almost lost it."

"And here I just thought it was Caroline's hand on your thigh..."

He laughed and said, "What, like this?" as he demonstrated.

"No, I think it was more like this..." she said, reaching over and through. A brief struggle ensued, ending with her on her back and his face about an inch above hers. He gave her a big, wet kiss and then rolled back off onto his side so he could see her better.

"Well," she said, "you sure didn't seem that interested at the time. When did you know?"

"I guess I was still kind of fighting it last fall, up until...that night. I just didn't want to admit it because I thought you weren't the quote unquote right kind of woman for me. Then, suddenly, I knew, but...I guess I still didn't have it quite worked out. Idiot."

"Don't call me an idiot," she poked him in the ribs, grinning.

"You know I wasn't. _I _was the idiot," he corrected, shaking his head.

"I gave you a good run for your money. 'Let's keep it casual, no commitment,' blah blah blah. That was idiotic. I don't do _anything _casually."

"No, you really don't," he said fondly. "So how about you? When did you know?"

"Oh, I think it was when I first set eyes on your palatial estate, here." She snickered, but then she suddenly realized that this was going too far.

She raised up on her elbow and looked down at him. "Hey, you know that's a joke, right? I don't care about the money and all that stuff, truly I don't. It's...almost an obstacle, even."

He nodded, lying back and folding his arms behind his head, and said very, very seriously, "I know that. I think we both know it was when you first saw my enormous cock."

Her mouth dropped open and she was stunned into silence for a moment that he, of all people, would use that word. _She _was the one who usually made rude jokes, not him. Then she gave a huge shout of laughter and fell on top of him as he lay cackling on the bed.

Eventually they stopped laughing, and looked at each other in a relaxed silence for a few moments, enjoying this wonderful new place whose existence neither had dared even to dream before.

"So, do you want to do it again, Big Guy?" she asked.

"Yes," he said shortly. And so they did, this time with laughter, teasing, inventiveness, and determination. He led her, fast, to the edge of a high, dazzling precipice, where they teetered for endless moments until they soared, together, entwined, into bliss.

Afterwards, following a long interval of happy silence during which they lay on their sides facing each other, entangled, letting their breathing slow, she asked, "Do you feel a burning need to talk about anything else right now? Because I hardly slept at all last night and I'm really beat..."

"No, we can talk later. Why couldn't you sleep?"

"Thinking about you. Plus, Captain Kirk downstairs was watching a 'Battlestar Galactica' Season One marathon with the volume turned up to 11." She made laser pistols with her hands and fired off a few "pyew pyew" shooting sounds.

He laughed, remembering the neighbor and his thumping broomstick. "Actually, I should probably get some sleep too—"

"Oh, please, please tell me you don't have an early tee-time tomorrow..." she said, her hand over her eyes in exaggerated despair.

"Well, yeah, unfortunately I do, but it's not _too _bad. Ten o'clock. I'm sorry. Obviously, I had no idea that this" he said, softly stroking her side where her waist dipped, "was going to happen."

"No, of course not. Hey, what's up with all this weekend athleticism, anyway? Why were you already playing squash when I called you at 8 o'clock this morning?"

"Trying not to think about you, of course."

"Oh, Will..." she said, tightening her arms around him, and feeling terrible for all she'd put him through.

"Yeah. I've been booking up my weekends for a while now."

She nodded. "I've never spent so much time at the office, either. And, unfortunately, tomorrow I'm going to pay for shutting off my phone all this evening. Did you notice I did that?" she asked proudly.

"Yes, I did. I shut off mine, too. Good for us."

They lay in silence for a while, just breathing each other in.

"We'll deal with tomorrow tomorrow," she murmured, half asleep.

"Yeah. Love you."

"Love you, too."

And they both drifted off to sleep in the shelter of each other's arms.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: As always, my utmost gratitude to betas Jan and Barbara for helping me to get things right-er._

**Chapter 14 **

The next morning, Lizzy woke up early, grinning, revved up, and ready to go as usual. She lay awake for 45 minutes just watching Will, enjoying the view and hoping he would come to soon. Finally he flopped over onto his back with an unhappy moan and, with one eye half open, groaned, "Why are you staring at me?"

She chirped in reply, "Just waiting for my honey to wake up."

He groaned some more, muttered something about it being too early for him to move his face, and closed his eyes again.

She gave him a quick kiss and jumped out of bed to go make some coffee. Then she went back to the bedroom and sat propped up next to him on the bed, wafting the scent of coffee toward him to entice him into consciousness. Eventually he sat up and staggered to the bathroom, while she headed for the front door. She peered through the peephole, hoping to avoid the prying eyes of Mrs. Kincaid, and stuck her arm out to pick up _The Times_ from the mat_. _She moved to the breakfast nook to read the paper. After a while he joined her, flopping down on the chair next to her and leaning on her to stay upright, his head on her much lower shoulder.

After a couple of cups of coffee and a bowl of Cheerios, he finally perked up enough to speak. They agreed that they'd work through lunch and meet up for dinner at her place around 7 o'clock. It took some effort, but they got him showered and shaved and brushed and dressed and ready to head for the golf course by 9:30.

They stood in each others' arms halfway to the front door, Will in his awful green golf pants and Lizzy in her grubby clothes from the day before. Their coats and gear were standing by, but neither Lizzy nor Will was quite ready to say goodbye.

"Ugh! I don't want to go to work," she complained against his chest, holding him tight.

"Wow, I don't think I've ever heard you say that before."

She pulled back and looked up at him. "True," she said thoughtfully. "Isn't that interesting."

"Well, for what it's worth, I _really _don't want to go play golf, either."

"I know. But you can't leave that poor guy, or gal, waiting for you at the tee forever," she said with regret.

"No. And it's a guy." They stood gazing at each other for a few heartbeats.

"OK, well," she finally said, and put her arms around his neck, intending to give him a quick kiss and be out the door. However, he had other ideas, and things quickly escalated to teenage makeout mode again. When they finally broke the kiss, they held each other tight, and he breathed into her ear, "I'm so, so glad..."

"Me, too. I can hardly believe it's true," she whispered back, a bit choked up.

Eventually she pulled away, straightened her skirt, tugged on her hat and coat, and said, "OK, my friend. You're officially going to be late now. Let's go."

He put on his coat and grabbed his clubs, and they headed out the door, nodding to Mrs. Kincaid in the hallway, and taking the elevator down to the lobby. "Good morning, Rodrigo," she called out to the Sunday morning doorman, as she and Will walked past hand in hand.

"Good morning, Lizzy," Rodrigo nodded at her. "It's nice to see you again." She smiled at him, happy to be back. And so, so much better than before.

Lizzy and Will stood on the sidewalk just beyond the awning at the building entrance for a moment, enjoying the sunshine and the gusty wind on what looked to be a lovely, if still chilly, spring morning.

"Well, it's going to be a tough round," he said, looking speculatively at the leaves and bits of paper skittering by in the wind.

"Go get 'em, baby," she grinned, squeezing his hand. "See you tonight. Love you."

"I love you, too."

They kissed chastely and turned and headed off in opposite directions, Will making for the garage around the corner and Lizzy for the subway. She spun and looked back at him, clapping her hand on her head to hold her hat down, her skirt blowing in the wind. She saw him look up as he rounded the corner, giving her a wave before disappearing. She waved back and spun back up the sidewalk, wishing she could skip without attracting attention from the cool New Yorkers who never did silly things like that. She settled for a happy little hop off the curb as she crossed the street and headed for the station at 68th Street.

* * *

Early that afternoon, Lizzy's BlackBerry rang with the new incoming text tone she had assigned to Will's number, a sunny little electronic version of "Sugar in the Morning" that made her laugh because it was so much the opposite of his actual morning capabilities. The text said, _Game over. Lost badly._

She wrote back, _Poor sweetie! What are you doing now?_

A minute later, his reply: _Missing you._

_Me too. Can't concentrate._

After a few moments, _Want to get lunch?_

She thrilled at the idea and started to key in her acceptance, but then stopped halfway and thought for a bit before writing back, _Want to soooooo much, but prob shouldn't or else won't make dinner on time_.

After a pause he wrote, _:-( but I understand._

_I'm really sorry. 7 my place still OK?_

_OK!_

_See you then. XXXOOO_

_XXXOOO_, he texted back. She noticed it was exactly the same number of Xs and Os she had written and wondered if he'd done it on purpose. That's what she would have done, calibrating everything carefully.

Later he texted her an offer to bring some takeout dinner with him. She naturally accepted. At five minutes before 7 she turned the corner to her street and saw him standing there in front of her building, bag in hand on the sidewalk. He was wearing jeans and his big black coat, flashing neon signs from the tattoo parlor across the street reflected in his eyes. Her first thought was Oh, man. I want that_._And then she thought, He does not belong standing on this nasty streetcorner. She'd have to give him a key ASAP.

"Hey! Sorry to keep you waiting," she called as she dashed toward him, grinning.

"No, I was early," he said, striding toward her with a lopsided smile. They met in front of the bodega two doors down from her building and stood for a moment, kissing, next to the boxes full of apples and oranges that Mr. Kim always left on the sidewalk. This time there were no bumping noses.

She grabbed him by the arm, her briefcase and purse swinging on her opposite shoulder, and said, "Come on, let's get you inside. I'm hungry!"

As he followed her through the front door she said, "Welcome back to my oh-so-charming hovel."

"I like it," he said. "It's very you."

He had picked up some lamb shawarma sandwiches from the Mediterranean deli nearby, and they sat on the sofa together to eat, leaning over the little coffee table pulled up close.

After they'd cleaned up and stretched back out on the sofa, her feet in his lap, she said, "Will, we started to talk about this, and then we got sidetracked, earlier, but...we still need to talk about the money."

"If you insist, but really, that's all over with as far as I'm concerned." He concentrated on gazing at her bare toes.

"I...it just feels wrong to me. We're too...new. And it puts me in debt to you in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. It makes things complicated and unequal between us."

"I understand that. Really, I do. Normally, I would never lend or give money to friends just for that reason." She eyed him skeptically. "No, really, I wouldn't. But this is...this feels different to me." Finally he looked at her, and she could see in his eyes how emotional he was about this.

"OK." She took a deep breath and sat up, moving closer to him. She reached out for his hand. "I want to understand. Can you please explain it to me?"

"All right, I'll try. It's not that it's nothing to me—the money, I mean. I agree, it's a lot of money." He paused. "But it's something that I really want to do for you and your family. Obviously, Lydia is a troubled kid, and for all of your sakes, I want her to get the best help available. I...well, basically, as I said before, I feel...in a way like I let Georgie down by not, you know, hitting her addictions and all that as hard as possible right from the start. And if I can help Lydia get off that track, then I want to do it."

"Will, what happened to Georgie was not your fault. And what is happening to Lydia is most _definitely _not your fault." She squeezed his hand.

"No, it wasn't. I know that. But it would still make me feel better. I have the will and the means. Please let me do this, for you and your family. And a little bit for myself, too." He looked her in the eye when he said this, and she knew he really meant it.

She nodded and briefly rested her head against his shoulder. "OK, I'm starting to see how you're looking at this," she said, and thought about it for a minute. "Please don't take this as a statement of intent, because it's not at all, but what if we break up?"

He waved his hand a little to indicate that he wasn't offended. "Then I will have done something good for my best friend Charlie's wife and her sister. I would do this for him, too, you know. If he couldn't afford it, I would."

"And what if this isn't the last time Lydia needs to go into rehab?" She had been worrying about that quite a lot. She knew that it often took several tries before it "took," and that frequently it never did.

"Let's deal with that if and when it happens. OK?"

She lay her head back against the sofa back and stared up at the ceiling for a few moments, squeezing his hand. She knew this whole thing had the potential to blow things up for them if they didn't establish some ground rules.

She sat up and turned back to look at him, one leg curled under her. "If I accept the money, and don't pay you back, then we need to agree on a few points, I think."

"All right, what are they?"

She held up one finger. "One, you can't ever, ever hold it over me that you gave me the money."

"I would never do that!" he said, appalled.

"I know. It's not in your character. Two," holding up another finger, "you have to really, really accept and know that I love you in spite of the money, not because of it."

"I already know that. Let me add my own condition. Three, you can't ever, ever let me have my way just because you feel indebted to me over this. I didn't do it for your gratitude, and that's why I didn't even want you to know about it."

She nodded. "OK, I promise to give you a hard time at every turn."

"Is that it?"

"Yep. Deal."

"Really?" He sounded surprised. "You're all right with it?"

"Yes. It still makes me uncomfortable, and I don't like taking help from anyone, but I can see it's important to you, so, OK. Please don't make me regret it."

"All right then." He sat back, still looking kind of stunned.

"How about that? Our first compromise." She smiled at him.

"Wow. I just...I can't help feeling like you gave a lot more than I did."

She nodded and looked at him very seriously. "True. I'm feeling a little disempowered, so I get to be on top tonight, OK?"

He laughed, but he could tell that it wasn't entirely a joke. "Do you really think that would help?"

"No, not really." She sat and thought about this for a moment. "There are just so many inequalities between us. How do we do this?"

"Wait a minute. We're both Ivy League graduates. We both have high-powered jobs. So far we're equals."

"Fair enough, as far as it goes. Actually, I'm realizing I don't even know how far it goes. There's the obvious thing here about money, namely that you have a ton of it and I don't. I do understand something about power. You know, from the people I know at work, and from hanging around the Supreme Court. But I think I'm only beginning to get my head around this whole _privilege _thing. This alien world you inhabit."

He looked confused by this. "What do you mean? I'm just a human being, like everyone else."

That was true, and yet it was also untrue, at the same time. "I mean how you know everybody who is anybody, because you or someone in your family went to school with them, or belongs to the same club with them, or whatever. That's all totally outside my experience. At Columbia and Yale, I knew that stuff was going on, but...I was outside it all because I got in on my own merit, not because I was born to it."

"Ouch!" He looked a little stung, but not seriously so.

She hurried to soothe him. "Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you didn't deserve to be there. You graduated, what, magna cum laude?"

"Summa."

That was not easy to do at Harvard. She raised her eyebrows and said, with respect, "I'm sorry. Summa cum laude. What I mean is, these places have changed a lot since the '60s, and now they let in women, and minorities, and Catholics, and Jews...but, you know, just being a student at Yale is not the same as being a part of that scene with private clubs and all that. You're there, but you don't have access to that kind of thing."

"No, I guess you're right." He paused. "The funny thing is, I never wanted to join Raven or any of the rest of that scene. I wasn't interested in all the drinking and humiliation and all that. A bunch of nineteen-year-old boys making big plans for themselves. It was stupid."

"So why did you?"

"My dad. There just wasn't any choice, really."

"And now all those drunk guys are...?"

"Are basically in charge of the country, or will be soon. We should all be very afraid," he said drily.

She laughed, even though she knew what he said was, in fact, true. "Anyway, I guess I just feel like... you have this big life that I don't understand. I don't want to disappear into it. I want to have my own big life, too. Next to yours. Connected to yours."

He nodded and said firmly, "I want you to have that, too. That's what I've been trying to say."

"And what about what you said that night...do you really not want that kind of partner or...wife, whatever?" She was pretty sure she knew the answer to that, but she needed to hear him say it in so many words. Last time, they had left too many important things unsaid.

"No. No. I thought a lot about the things _you _said that night. And I realized that I don't need a wife for all the reasons I said I did. I already _have _a great party planner, and a social organizer, and a personal assistant. That stuff is taken care of. Charlie and Jane's engagement party was pretty good, right?" he appealed to her, and she nodded. It had been perfect. "These are problems I can solve by throwing money at them."

"OK...so what _do _you want?"

"Just someone to love me, and to let me love her, and to be my partner in life through all the inevitable pain that comes our way."

"And it does come, doesn't it?" she nodded, thinking about his sister, and hers, his parents and hers. She paused and added, "But also the joys, big and small. It's important to share those, too."

"Yeah. So, what do you say we try our best? Take it as it comes?"

"OK, I'll try not to theorize and stew too much." She knew that would be difficult, considering how her mind worked. "But I still get to be on top tonight," she teased.

He laughed. "OK. So what are we waiting for?"

"Hell if I know. Come on!"

A few minutes later they found themselves sitting at the end of her bed, in their underwear, still a little out of whack. Her earlier enthusiasm to get going had subsided a bit, and now she held him, her head on his shoulder.

"What's going on in there? Regrets about the money?" he whispered.

"No, no. Just feeling a little wrung out after that intense negotiation, I think."

"We'll work it out, one day at a time."

She pulled back and looked at him, lit by the reflected light from the street. He stroked the side of her face gently. For a moment, she just couldn't believe that this beautiful man was hers.

"Will, what do you want with me, anyway?"

"I want to see you shine."

She almost burst into tears.

He turned and lay down on his back, his arms up over his head in total surrender to her, so different from his usual active, persistent approach. She crawled on top of him, straddling him, and leaning down to look into his eyes. They were focused on her own, telling her she could have anything that she wanted, and do anything to him that she wanted. But, she realized, _that _wasn't what she wanted, here, or anywhere else.

She shook her head and sat up on her heels. "No...come here, come to me." She whispered and held out her arms. He sat back up, too, and took her in his arms.

"No," she said again, holding him tight, her cheek against his. "I don't want that, even if it's only a game. All I want is for us to be...equal. Partners, like you said. In every way."

He leaned back a little so he could see her face, and watched her serious dark eyes, watching him. "Yes." He nodded. "Yes."

* * *

The next morning he had to get up very early so he could go home and get ready for work. They agreed to eat breakfast at her place so they could have a little extra time together, even though mostly he just sat there at the rickety table in the eat-in kitchen in his usual stupefied morning silence. Lizzy fondly watched him try again and again, with only middling success, to make the spoon full of cereal meet his mouth. When he was finished, he got up, and, with a sleepy smile, staggered off to the bedroom to get dressed. She opened her mouth to say something about the cereal bowl still sitting on the table, and then thought better of it. This was something she and Mr. Wonderful needed to have a talk about, but she knew it could wait until another time when his higher brain functions had returned.

That evening she had a business event, so they agreed to spend the night apart. But by the time she got home at 11 o'clock, she was so miserable at the thought of not seeing him that, after a quick call to see if he concurred, she was soon in a cab heading Uptown to his place. In the back seat of the dark cab, a suit bag, her bulging computer case, her purse, and a jammed overnight bag piled on top of her, she wondered briefly what the hell she was doing. As she watched the streetlights go by, she asked herself, Are these the considered actions of a mature, serious, professional woman, or the irresponsible actions of a hormone-addled teenager? Not that it mattered, really, because she was doing it, regardless.

Apparently Will was feeling some of the same things. He met her in the lobby, and in the elevator on the way up to his apartment they made out enthusiastically the whole time. So maybe, she thought, that answered her earlier question.

They settled in together, lying side-by-side on the big white sofa in his big white living room, and gave each other reports about their workdays. Then she said, "Will, there's something I want to talk to you about. I need to ask you to do something for me."

"OK, what's that?" He was all business.

"I want you to wash your own cereal bowl in the morning."

"What? That's a big thing?" Now he just looked perplexed. The wrinkle between his eyebrows put in a showing.

"Well...yes. It's important to me. Symbolically."

"Why? I mean, I'll try to remember, but I guess I don't quite understand why this is such a big deal to you."

"Because...it's something that needs to be done. And if you don't do it, then I have to do it. And if I have to do it, instead of you, then you're saying that your time doing something else is more important than my time. And that's not OK. It's not equal."

"So...are you saying that you want everything between us to be perfectly equal, including this? I mean, identical in some way?"

She shook her head no, and then thought about this for a while, trying to think of a way to put it so he would understand what she meant. "Um, let's take this out of the theoretical clouds and talk about it in practical terms. What I am saying is that I don't want to clean up after you, because I have other things to do with my time, just like you do."

He looked relieved. "Oh, well, I don't expect you to do that. I thought we'd worked that out already. I pay people to do that stuff. That's fine."

She smiled inwardly and thought, class privilege is so weird. "So you'll clean up after yourself? We'll both clean up after ourselves? Especially at my place, where we don't have any, you know, _staff_, to do this stuff. Also there are no domestic fairies to wave their magic wands and make the dirty dishes disappear."

"Sure, if that's important to you. Yes. At breakfast, you might have to remind me, though."

"OK, sleepyhead. Thank you."

Had it really been that easy? Probably it wouldn't be, in the end. But if they used their big boy and big girl words, she was sure they could work things out.

* * *

_A/N again: Thanks so much to those of you who have left kind reviews. I'm glad you're enjoying the story and I wish it were possible to have more of a discussion here. Thanks and happy new year!_

_Thanks to the anonymous reviewer who corrected my incorrect golf terminology. I fixed the problem.  
_


	15. Chapter 15

_A/N: As always, my deepest gratitude to Jan and Barbara, betas extraordinaires, for all their corrections, questions, pokes, prods, and fabulous additions. Thank you both so much! We're almost at the end._

**Chapter 15**

March 2007

Starting that week, Lizzy and Will fell into a routine. But it was different from the last time. Now, most nights they met for a late dinner, at a restaurant or at one of their apartments, and then worked side by side at home until bedtime. They stayed together almost every night. Sometimes it just wasn't practical given work or social obligations—an overnight business trip, dinners with clients or investors, the occasional solo evening with friends. But even then, one or the other of them often found themselves in a cab at 1 or 2 in the morning heading Uptown or Downtown on the quiet streets because they just couldn't bear the thought of a night apart, of not seeing each other for another day.

Things were different in other ways, too. Now, no subjects were off limits. They talked about their families, their childhoods, and their hopes and fears in ways they never had before. Will talked about how bereft and in over his head he'd felt at age 26 when his parents had died in a car accident, leaving him with Georgie and a business empire to take care of. Lizzy talked about growing up in a household with parents who were totally checked out, trying to find her own way, and looking to Maddie and Ed for real guidance.

They also decided to be open about their relationship with family and friends, and started talking about whether and how to be present in each other's professional lives. Lizzy was very worried about how that might play out for her. She worried about being seen simply as an extension of him. In her workplace, would people try to get at him through her? At his work-related events, would she just be ornamentation on his arm? They decided to take things slow with their colleagues at work.

On the home front, however, Lizzy realized that she needed to tell Jane as soon as possible. She felt terrible about how much she had kept from her sister through the fall and early spring.

Lizzy called Jane and invited her and Charlie out for dinner the next Friday night, at the swanky French restaurant, Le Coq Violet, where they'd all had their first meal together nearly a year before. It was nice and quiet, which was what Lizzy wanted for this Very Serious Conversation.

Jane and Charlie were already seated at their table when Lizzy and Will walked in, holding hands. As they approached the table, Lizzy could see Jane's usual placid smile turn into a big cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.

Charlie called out, "Aha! I see you've decided to come out of the closet!"

"Oh, thank goodness! Finally!" exclaimed Jane, turning to Charlie. "See? I told you this was what the super-serious dinner invitation was about!"

Lizzy gaped at them as Will helped her take her seat. "What? You knew all along?"

Jane squeezed her hand across the table. "I have eyes, sweetie."

Lizzy looked at Will fondly, her cheeks a little pink. "And we thought we were being sooooo discreet."

Jane said, "Oh, honey. We put two and two together when we all had dinner that time, and then you were both so strung out over the holidays...to say nothing of our engagement party."

"But..." Lizzy stuttered.

"It's OK. We knew you weren't ready to talk about it."

"Not that Will ever talks about anything..." teased Charlie.

"He's doing better with that now," Lizzy said, smiling at Will. "Much better. And I'm working hard on it, too."

They stayed late at the restaurant, enjoying the conversation. Jane and Charlie were planning their wedding for late July. It would be big, at Charlie's family's church in his Connecticut hometown.

Lizzy asked, "Jane, any news about the job in your lab?" Jane had applied for a longer-term research position in the Child Development Lab where she currently had a post-doc.

"Yes! I got it. I just heard the news yesterday. So I'll be staying there next year. I got a three-year contract." Jane looked thrilled.

"Are you going to be looking for a faculty position after that?" asked Will.

"No, I don't think so," replied Jane. She smiled at Charlie. "We're probably going to start a family before too long. I just can't see trying to put in all the hours at the lab and teaching and applying for grants and all that while raising kids of my own. So I'll probably, you know, retire or whatever, when the time comes. Be a full-time mom."

Lizzy smiled and reached out to take her hand. "That's great, Janey! I'm really happy for you. Both of you." Jane and Charlie gazed at each other adoringly, their dreams of future happiness sparkling in their eyes.

On the way back to Will's place in the cab, he asked Lizzy, "Are you really happy for Jane, or were you just saying that? The stay-at-home-mom thing."

Lizzy looked at him in shock. "What? Of course I'm happy for her! That's what she's always wanted. Why wouldn't I be happy for her?"

"Well, she's thinking about giving up everything she's been working for, her education, and all that. Just like you said, before."

She put her hand on his knee with an affectionate squeeze, and said, "Oh, I see where this is coming from. Will, I don't demand that every woman make the same fucked-up choices in life that I've made. The point is that we should _have _a choice. If this will make her happy, and if she and Charlie can figure out a way to do it that will make her feel secure and valued, which I think they can do, then who the hell am I to judge?"

He nodded. "Hmm. All right. Choices."

She put her head on his shoulder. "And I choose you, by the way."

He smiled, leaning his head against hers, and said, "I choose you, too." They rode the rest of the way home in happy silence.

* * *

Lizzy had a lot to tell Charlotte, too. Charlotte knew most of what had happened with Lydia, but not the whys and hows. She also didn't know that Lizzy and Will had gotten back together the previous week, because Lizzy had been too preoccupied to talk. Lizzy decided not to tell Charlotte how Will had paid for the room at Tranquility. She just didn't know whether Charlotte would understand, and she hadn't told anyone else, either, except for Jane. She made arrangements to meet Charlotte for brunch at noon on Sunday the week after the dinner with Jane and Charlie.

They met at their usual deli and took their bagels and schmear to the park, sitting outside in the chilly spring breeze. Lizzy filled Charlotte in on all the details of Lydia's OD and the aftermath. Then came the hard part, explaining how she and Will had gotten back together, without making reference to the money or to the specifics of Georgie's various addictions.

"Long story short...Will and I met up again because I wanted to say thanks to him for helping our family make some of the arrangements for Lydia—"

"Oh, right, his sister...he would know about that stuff."

"That's right. Anyway, one thing led to another, blah blah blah, and we're back together."

Charlotte looked at her skeptically, because obviously there was a lot she was leaving out. Her voice tinged with sarcasm, she snarked, "Riiiiiight...so you confessed your undying love to each other, fell into each other's arms, and, bam, that's it?"

"Yup, pretty much," said Lizzy, taking a big bite of bagel and chewing it vigorously.

A delighted smile lit up Charlotte's face. "Really? Lizzy Bennet is in luuuuv?"

Lizzy smiled back and didn't say anything.

"Ha! I knew it! I knew it! So much for Ms. I-Don't-Have-Time-for-a-Real-Boyfriend, Ms. I'm-Not-Interested-in-Dating and all that bullshit! Welcome back to the world of the living, girlfriend!"

Lizzy jabbed Charlotte with her elbow and grinned, "Don't hold back, C, tell me what you really think."

"Are you happy? Is it serious? Is the sex good?"

Lizzy laughed at her nosy questions. "Yes, I'm very happy. Yes, it's serious. And, no comment."

"My, my, my. If no details are forthcoming, it _must _be serious. Wow. I never thought I'd see the day..."

"Really? Was I that bad, before?" Lizzy asked, suddenly sober.

"Well...I thought maybe you'd stay single, by choice, make your job your top priority. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm sure there are lots of fine role models out there. Let's see, there's, um, Condie Rice...Janet Reno..."

Lizzy laughed at her again, "Don't forget Mother Teresa and Sister Helen Prejean. So basically, the role models for successful, never-married women are nuns and odd, asexual creatures. And this is your opinion of me?"

Charlotte looked perplexed. "That is weird, isn't it? There are lots of successful divorced or widowed women, without kids, though. Madeleine Albright, Olympia Snowe...I wonder if that's going to change?"(1)

"Actually, Madeleine Albright has three children. But anyway, I don't think women in our generation have to make that same choice, a career or a man. Or a family, whatever."

"Yeah, well, we'll find out, won't we?"

They sat silently, chewing and thinking, for a few moments.

"I want you to meet him, Charlotte."

"Another first!"

"Just don't ask him about the Fitzwilliams, OK? He really hates it when people start quizzing him on what it's like to be a Fitzwilliam."

They made arrangements for Lizzy and Will, Charlotte and Liam to have dinner together several weeks later at a Greek restaurant that Charlotte and Liam could afford.

The men didn't have much to say to each other. They were an odd match, the straight-arrow capitalist and the tattooed sculptor-cum-Gap-manager. But Charlotte laughed at Will's sly sense of humor and visibly approved of his obvious, though restrained, affection for her friend. Will smiled at how Lizzy and Charlotte teased and joked with each other. Lizzy thought Liam was a little pompous when he talked about his art, but she kept that to herself and focused instead on how he seemed to appreciate Charlotte's brains, practicality, and outrageousness.

After they'd parted and headed for home in their respective cabs, Lizzy's BlackBerry chimed with Charlotte's text ringtone.

_Nice ass, good hair and teeth, adores you. A keeper._

Lizzy snorted and texted back,

_Glad you approve of the horseflesh. Liam is great, love you together._

Will said, "What is it? Can I see?"

Lizzy laughed, deleting the message, and said, "No, you can't see it! But Charlotte approves of you," switching to her best Queen of England voice and waving her hand in his direction, "so you may stay."

"I like her, too. I can see why you two are friends."

"Yeah, she's the best."

* * *

A few weeks later, Will had to attend a cocktail party in the evening. A lot of potential investors were going to be there, so he needed to go and try to rustle up some business. A couple of days before the event, when they were sitting in his entertainment room watching TV for a few minutes after dinner, he invited Lizzy to come with him. "I know you're busy, but I thought...it wouldn't be so unbearably boring if you were there, and also maybe you could make some useful business contacts."

"Who are these people?" Lizzy asked. She wasn't sure she was ready for this. Also she wasn't sure she had time for it, except if it could help her identify some some new potential clients.

"Well, I don't know if you're going to like this, but it's sort of a Harvard alumni thing." He looked uncomfortable.

"So, basically, it's a Raven reunion, is what you mean, right?"

"Not exclusively. A lot of the people there will be Raven alumni. Yes."

She nodded. "OK. I'd like to see what the people who run the world look like."

His eyebrows shot up. "Really?"

"Sure, why not? I'll be Jane Goodall, watching the movers and shakers swinging around in their natural habitat. Grooming, dominance displays, all that."

"Will you promise to play nice?" he asked, suspicious.

"Of course! As long as you promise you'll give me the super-secret sign if I'm about to shake hands with a woman you've slept with."

"That's unlikely, considering that probably everyone there will be in our parents' generation."

"You never know. So if your first kiss from sleepaway camp, Flossy Buffington or whatever her name was, is there..."

He laughed. "OK, OK. I see what you're saying. You're right, it's a small circle of people. I already told you about all of my past...whatevers anyway."

"Yes, you did. Just remember the secret sign, OK?"

"OK, fine." He paused. "And her name was Merry St. John, and it was at the sailing club, not sleepaway camp."

They walked to the event, hand in hand, the few short blocks to the 88 Club. It was an exclusive Upper East Side men's club tucked between a tailor and a very fancy steak house. That whole part of the block reeked of cigar smoke and hundred-dollar bills.

As they strolled along, she asked, "How are you going to introduce me?"

He shot her a sideways glance. "The usual way. Shake hands, say 'how do you do...'"

"No, seriously. I want to know. Friend? Girlfriend? _Love_-ah? What?" She didn't want to be arm candy, an extension of him, especially if this was supposed to be about building business contacts.

"Oh. I hadn't thought about that. What do you want me to say?"

"How about...if you just tell them my name and say where I work? They can infer the rest."

"OK, if that's what you want."

"It is."

And that's what he did when they got to the 88 Club. Some of the people seemed confused by it at first, assuming she was attached to Will in some way but not sure exactly how. All of the women were there, after all, by virtue of being attached to one of the men, the members of the all-male Raven society.

Shortly after their arrival, Will got sucked into a confab with a big bowling ball of man carrying a giant martini, so Lizzy walked, smiling, over to the closest group of women to see how this worked. The women were mostly in their 50s, 60s and 70s, highly coiffed, brittle blondes in a pastel rainbow of Chanel suits. She didn't really know what to say to them at first, especially after she discovered that they were discussing a charity fundraiser she hadn't heard of. When attention eventually turned to her, the women began sussing her out, sniffing around for her bona fides, working out what she was doing there. She smiled and answered their questions, but wasn't sure how to go on since their lives intersected in zero ways as far as she could tell.

Pretty quickly, though, she discovered that one thing she could talk about with them was their daughters, many of whom were her age, and were professionals like her. She found that she'd been at Yale with one woman's daughter. The woman called over her husband.

"Skip, dear! Lizzy here was at Yale with Pippa!" And she was in. Sort of. The men, at least, knew how to have a conversation with her about work. She imagined that was because of their daughters. Anyway, she was there, she was obviously connected to Will in some way, and that seemed to be enough for now. Even if she hadn't gone to Harvard or Wellesley, attended the right boarding school or sleepaway camp, been a debutante, summered in the Hamptons, or belonged to the right secret society or tennis club.

After they'd been at the party for about an hour, Lizzy and Will stood apart from the others near the bar. Lizzy hung onto her drink for dear life. Will, on the other hand, was pretty relaxed, in his element.

Lizzy leaned over and whispered, "Why do these women all have such great posture? The same, great posture?"

Will smiled. "Ah. I know the answer to that one. My mom told me about this. At Wellesley, they all took a class called...um... 'Fundies,' which was short for 'Fundamentals of Movement,' I think (2). They learned how to have good posture, and how to get into the backseat of cars and walk up the stairs with their knees together." He made a little walking gesture with his fingers, knuckles close together.

"Well, that explains a lot of things," she said, nodding sagely. "Knees together. Note to self."

"You said you'd play nice!" he scolded, laughing a little.

"I am! And I've already met two potential clients who I'll follow up with. My appreciation for how the elite perpetuates its own privilege is increasing exponentially," she quipped.

"I really don't see how this is any different from what you already do on practically a daily basis."

She put her hand on his arm and looked at him fondly. "I know you don't, sweetheart. And I love you anyway."

Still, on the whole, she thought that maybe this was something she could handle.

* * *

Five weeks into Lizzy and Will's new relationship, Lydia was released from Tranquility. During Lydia's time there, Lizzy had been able to make two trips to Connecticut to attend family therapy sessions. They hadn't been pretty. Tom and Lillian had been visiting more frequently than Lizzy for those sessions, as had Jane and Maddie.

Lydia had gone through a couple of weeks of detox and four weeks of sober living, and she seemed to be making good progress. To everyone's relief and surprise, after some initial resistance she truly seemed to have come to grips with the seriousness of what had just happened to her, and how close she had been to dying. The therapists had had a lot of things to say to her, of course, but one apparently innocuous, simple thing they'd said seemed to have grabbed her attention. During a family therapy session, the counselor had asked her, referring to her OD and how and where she'd been found, "Is _this _how you want to live the rest of your life? How you want to die? Really?" The answer she gave, after thinking about it for a few minutes, was, no, it wasn't, not by a long shot. Somehow, this seemed to have been a turning point for her. There were ups and downs after that, but the overall trajectory was upwards. Lizzy was really proud of Lydia for turning herself around like this, especially since she was only 18 years old and hadn't until now shown signs of unusual maturity.

Other members of the family, on the other hand, had behaved in much less praiseworthy ways. Lillian did not seem to have grasped some important points about how her own narcissistic behavior, including her heavy use of alcohol, had contributed to Lydia's problems. Tom had been at the counseling sessions in body, but evidently not in mind. He simply wouldn't engage on the questions of Lydia's addiction or Lillian's similar proclivities. Both parents had refused to go to Al-Anon meetings on the grounds that they didn't have any reason to, since they were not friends or relatives of an alcoholic. In view of Lillian and Tom's refusal to support Lydia's recovery, Jane and Maddie had arranged for Lydia to move to a sober living facility in Artemis instead of moving back home after she had completed her treatment. Charlie and Jane footed the bill.

Lizzy and Will went to visit Lydia her first weekend in the facility. Lydia looked better, healthier. She, Jane, Maddie, and Lizzy had talked about it and decided together that she would take a break from school to concentrate on her recovery. Meanwhile, she was studying for her high school equivalency exam. The plan was that she would work part-time and go to community college part-time in the fall, deferring her full-time college admission until January. Then she would be starting at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her college acceptance letter had come while she was at Tranquility. Unfortunately, she hadn't been accepted at RISD, the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, which had been her first choice. But considering all the trouble she'd had in the fall, it seemed like a miracle, now, that she'd managed to get her applications and her portfolio together at all. And it was an even bigger miracle that she'd been accepted at SCAD.

Lizzy talked with Lydia, while Will listened silently. Lydia was spending a lot of time in counseling, and she was also still trying to get the dosages on her depression and anxiety meds right. But she was still making progress here in the new facility. Lydia told Lizzy that in therapy, she had finally been able to admit that one of the things she was struggling with was her sexual orientation. She had known, she said, since junior high school, that she was a lesbian, but she hadn't felt safe expressing it. Her struggles with depression and drugs and alcohol and cutting had been, at least in part, connected with that. They had been a kind of self-medication to dull the pain of not being able to live in a way that was true to her inner self, although of course that wasn't the only thing going on.

Lizzy said, "Oh, Lyddie. I'm so sorry. I hope you know that we love you no matter what. We love you just the way you are. And I don't mean that in a 'we love you even though you're an axe murderer' kind of way. I mean it in an 'I love my fabulous gay sister!' kind of way."

"I know that," Lydia said, "I know _you _do. And Jane, and Maddie and Ed. You just don't know what it was like at school. And mom is such a...I don't even know what to say about mom and dad."

Lillian's reaction to Lydia's coming out had baffled them all. She'd shrugged and said, "Well, at least we won't have to worry about teen pregnancy," and that was it. Tom hadn't reacted in any way. Apparently he understood class issues, was still working on getting his head around issues of gender and race, and didn't "get" sexual orientation at all.

Lizzy said, "You know, Maria Lucas says that all the cool kids at Amherst are gay. I bet you a million bucks that's true at SCAD, too. A hundred million bucks."

Lydia laughed a little. "Maybe. But it sure isn't true in Artemis. Small minds in small-town America."

"Things will get better, Lyddie. We'll work hard to make them better."

After they left Lydia, they stopped by to see Lizzy's parents. Her mother was out in the art shed and could only be drawn out for long enough to say hello. She didn't want to talk to Will because somehow she blamed him for the fuss over her video camera at the engagement party, which was the last time she'd seen him. Now she was mad at Lizzy, too, because apparently she was connected to him in some new way.

Tom stuck his head out of his study long enough to say he was happy to see Lizzy. Then he disappeared back inside his lair, apparently expecting that Lillian would entertain the guests, as usual. Lizzy was mortified that her parents were so rude, after all Will had done for Jane, and for her, and especially for Lydia. But of course they didn't know about that. Lizzy and Will sat together in the living room for a while and then decided to head home after getting something to eat in town.

They went to Spartacus, Lizzy's favorite childhood pizza joint just off campus, but it just wasn't the same. It was all clean and bright now, and someone had painted over her favorite graffiti in the bathroom stall: "Go Reds, smash State." Now it was just a clean, beige wall. Further proof, thought Lizzy, that you can never go back home again.

Will drove the whole way back to the city so he wouldn't get carsick. They talked about her family, what the hell was wrong with her parents, why she'd wanted to get out of Artemis so much when she was younger, and, of course, about Lydia. Lizzy hadn't ever dug so deep in talking about many of these things, not even to Charlotte. Or, more precisely, these were things that Charlotte knew about because she'd lived through them with Lizzy, and so, as a result, they had never had to talk about them. Having to put some of it into words for the first time was really, really hard for Lizzy. They had to stop a couple of times when she needed Will to hold her and calm her down.

By the time they arrived back at Will's place, they had agreed that it would be a great, great thing if the Fitzwilliam-Darcy Trust could broaden its current exclusive focus from arts in the public schools, and do something for kids like Lydia, struggling with multiple issues in their lives. And also for kids like Georgie, before it was too late, and they were lost forever. Maybe it was time to start thinking about what other new causes the Trust could support in the future, as well. The very next week, Will put out feelers to the organizations and groups he had worked with while Georgie had been at her most troubled as a teenager. They started to assemble a plan, a structure, a strategy, for what they could all do together with $20 million.

* * *

Several weeks after Lizzy had attended Will's Raven event, DeWitt had its spring cocktail party and dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lizzy and Will talked about it, and decided that they would give it a try as a couple.

As they left their things at the coat check, Lizzy turned to Will and reminded him that it was this spot, right here, where they'd first seen each other nearly a year before.

"You were so grumpy. What was going on with you?"

"Oh, you know, crappy day at work, fight with the board, long talk with the lawyers about Georgie. Plus, I was just being an ass, I guess."

She pulled him into a dark corner in the Great Hall. "And what do you think now? Am I your type?" She put her hands on his chest and looked up into his eyes, her own sparkling mischievously.

He pretended to get huffy. "No, you're not my _type_. That implies that you're interchangeable with any woman who's 'like' you somehow. But you're in a class all your own. You're the one for me, that's all."

Lizzy laughed. "Smooth talker." He deserved a big reward for that well-executed save.

A few minutes later, they emerged reluctantly from behind the ficus and headed for the party. Lizzy had to turn her skirt back around so the zipper was where it belonged. It was interesting how much damage just a little necking could do.

As soon as they walked into European Sculpture Court, Lizzy had second thoughts about whether this was a good idea after all. Tad McGuffington, a young partner who was one of the biggest jerks in the firm, spotted Will and came over to chat him up. It turned out that they had been schoolmates at Deerfield Academy as teenagers. Lizzy knew the nuances of Will's well-schooled facial expressions by now and could see that he wasn't very pleased to run into Tad again after all this time. After Tad had introduced his wife, Zibbie, to Will, he elbowed Lizzy, winked at her, and stage-whispered, "Nice catch, Bennet," as they walked off. She wanted to punch him, but restrained herself.

A little later, another of her least-favorite associates, Chip Swales, attached himself to Will for a while. It turned out he was a member of the same club as Will, and was active in the semi-annual squash tournaments there. Will looked at Lizzy and rolled his eyes when Chip finally stopped sucking up and left. A few other people came around after that to pay court, too.

Will and Lizzy left the dinner early and walked back to his place, since it was a lovely, warm spring evening.

Will took her hand and said, "God, no wonder you hate working there. Tad and Chip are HUGE assholes. Nobody wants to play squash with Chip because he is such a sore loser." Lizzy knew this was extraordinarily harsh criticism indeed, since the men at the club valued being a good sport above all else. "I know a couple of the other partners from, I don't know, Raven or some boards I sit on or something, and they are just godawful. They poison the atmosphere wherever they go. I'm sorry you have to spend time with those jerks."

Lizzy was very surprised to hear him unload like this. But she also felt vindicated. It hadn't all been a figment of her imagination after all.

* * *

Later that week, while they were enjoying some excellent potstickers at Chinese Dumpling Gourmet, out of the blue Will said, "Want to meet my cousin Richard?"

Richard had phoned Will that morning saying he would be in New York the next day and wondering if Will would be free for evening drinks. Richard was a lawyer by training and worked as chief-of-staff for his older brother, who was a congressman representing one of the suburban districts in the greater New York City area.

Lizzy agreed, and this led to a long discussion about Will's various cousins, aunts and uncles. Richard was the only one of the cousins Will had had anything to do with since Georgie's OD. Richard had always been a relatively straight arrow and he was the only family member who had come to Will's aid in the aftermath of the crisis. Everyone else had been too wrapped up in their own dramas, scandals and excesses to do anything other than send flowers.

The next evening at 9 o'clock, Lizzy walked into a dark hotel bar and spied Will sitting at a corner table with a shorter man with whom he shared a clear family resemblance. When they stood up to greet her, Lizzy noticed that Richard—it could only be him, after all—was wearing a fluorescent flowered tie. It was a shout of eccentricity that leaped out from his otherwise conservative and extremely well-groomed appearance. Will kissed her hello, and Richard looked her in the eye and said how pleased he was to meet her, really seeming to mean it. He quickly brought her up to speed on the story he had been telling Will. So began a fun and interesting evening of Washington "inside baseball."

Richard was smooth, full of bonhomie, always knowing the right thing to say, which seemed appropriate given his profession. He was also a garrulous, irreverent, and ribald raconteur, and he regaled them with tidbits about the latest backstabbing, logrolling, horse-trading, hypocrisy, and scandalous behavior occurring on Capitol Hill.

After finishing the long and salacious tale of a certain overbearingly moralistic congressman, a hooker, and a truckload of Cool Whip, Richard turned to Lizzy with a gleam in his eye and said, "So, Will tells me you clerked for Justice Goldberg a couple of years ago. Which cases did you work on? Which opinions did you write?"

Lizzy filled him in, and answered a few questions he had about the real, behind-the-scenes maneuvering during that year-which justices had not been on speaking terms with each other at that time, and so on. In return, she asked him about the latest gossip at SCOTUS. He was, of course, only too happy to oblige.

Lizzy asked Richard about his sources of gossip, and Will interjected that one of the most reliable sources of information was Eleanor, Richard's intrepid and equally garrulous wife. It turned out that they had met while they were both working for Senator Charles Schumer, the New Yorker famous for matchmaking and urging his staffers to marry each other because he believed in true love.(3) Eleanor still worked for Chuck, but Richard had moved on when his brother had won a seat in Congress.

A couple of hours later, Richard stood up and said he had to pack it in. He needed to head upstairs to get ready for some morning meetings and to call Eleanor.

Turning to Lizzy, Richard smiled, "It was wonderful to meet you. I haven't seen Will so happy since...well, ever." Looking at Will, he said, "Hang on to this one, my man. She's the real thing, not like all those Bunnies and Muffins you used to date."

"Shut up, Richard," said Will, flushing to the tips of his ears and affectionately punching Richard on the arm.

Richard turned and gave him a giant bear hug, the two of them pounding each other on the back in manly fashion. He gave Lizzy a kiss on the cheek, said his goodbyes, and then dashed off, leaving a crackling trail of energy in his wake. Will and Lizzy stood, arms around each other, watching him go.

"Well!" Lizzy commented wryly. "He's more fun than a barrel full of monkeys."

"Yeah. Always has been." Will's voice was tinged with nostalgia.

"I was predisposed to like him anyway since you said he had helped you so much with Georgie. But now I think he might just be my favorite cousin in your whole family."

"What, you like him better than Trixie, paparazzi darling and BFF of London Sheraton, the hotel heiress?"

"Well, to be fair, I haven't met her, have I? Although I must say how much I admire that little bejeweled dog she keeps in her purse."

Will squeezed her tighter. "No. No, you haven't met her, or the rest of the family. And I think we'll just leave it that way for a while. I don't want to scare you off."

"I'm not going anywhere. Besides, if Richard's tie didn't scare me off, do you really think that a purse-dog could?"

"No, but the professional-wrestler-turned-governor married to my cousin, the Face of Chanel, might."

"You're right, you're right. Let's play it safe. For now, anyway." They both laughed and wandered out into the bustle and steam of the city at night.

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State under President George Bush, and Janet Reno was Attorney General under President Bill Clinton. Madeleine Albright was Secretary of State under President Clinton, and Olympia Snowe was a long-time U.S. Senator from the state of Maine. As of 2012, there were more never-married and divorced women in American politics than there were in 2006. For example, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has never married, and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is divorced with no children. In 2012, the first "out" (and unmarried) lesbian U.S. Senator was elected, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

(2) The class Fundamentals of Movement, or Fundies, was a real thing at Wellesley College up until around 1970. All Freshwomen were required to take it, and it really did teach them things like how to have good posture, how to walk up and down stairs without exposing themselves, how to get into the back of a car without exposing themselves or sticking their bums in their dates' faces, how to put their suitcases up on luggage racks without exposing themselves, and how to put on a coat without exposing themselves. Hmm, there seems to be a theme here. You can read more about this in _Pinstripes & Pearls: The Women of the Harvard Law Class of '64_, by Judith Hope. Hillary Clinton took this class, as did the writer Nora Ephron.

(3) Charles Schumer, the U.S. Senator from New York, really does push his staffers to marry each other. To quote from a New York Times article on 8/17/2012 that I unfortunately can't link to here on ff .net, "'Our staff is a family,' Mr. Schumer said, his voice often taking a paternal tone. 'I want them to be happy. I get worried that they'll be lonely. So I encourage them. If I think it's a good match, I try to gently — as gently as I can — nudge it.'"


	16. Chapter 16

_A/N: And here it is, the very last chapter of this story. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and sharing it with you. And one final, great big thank you to Jan and Barbara for their fantastic beta-ing skills. You're the best!_

**Chapter 16**

Late spring 2007

Because Lizzy and Will both worked so many hours, it was hard trying to make time for each other. He was, in fact, working even harder than before, overseeing WPD's transition to funding green startups while simultaneously winding down its older buyout and restructuring activities. She was still juggling her pro bono cases and her billable hours, and had found that she was forced to choose between spending time with Will and volunteering at the women's shelter. She chose Will. She felt bad about it, but there were only so many hours in the day. Many days their only time together was spent grabbing a late dinner and then working side-by-side at home till bedtime.

In some ways it was the most mundane details of being together while trying to have a functional worklife that caused the worst problems: making sure that the right suit for tomorrow was at the right apartment, or carrying papers and files and computers around all the time to make sure that they had them when they needed them. The late-night cab rides were grueling.

It helped when she took over a drawer or two at his place, and room in the bathroom cabinet, and then space in the closet. Eventually she also commandeered some desk space in one of the spare bedrooms.

But there wasn't a lot they could do at her place. Her building was so old that her bedroom didn't have a closet, only a single jammed wardrobe, so he had to hang his clothes up on the back of the door. There wasn't room for a desk in the bedroom, and since she worked on the table in the eat-in kitchen, the only workspace for him was the sofa and coffee table in the livingroom.

Finally, at 11 o'clock on a Sunday night in June when they were spending the night at Will's, Lizzy reached her breaking point. She discovered that once again she had remembered to bring her suit, but had left her dress shoes at her apartment. It was either go to court in a skirt suit with sneakers and be mistaken for a secretary, or head Downtown to get the shoes.

"Fuck. I can't believe I did this again. Do you want to drive me down there and back, or should I take a cab? Or, do you want to take a cab with me and spend the night at my place? What a disaster." This was miserable. She was tired and she didn't want to go anywhere.

"Oh, crap. Well, let me pack my stuff up, and I'll cab down with you and spend the night there. There's nowhere to park."

"We can't keep doing this, can we?"

"No. I'm beat. Do you want to move in here with me?" he asked, fatigue written on his face.

"Yes. No. I don't know." Her confusion showed in her expression.

For about an hour, as they took a cab to her apartment and got ready for bed, they talked in circles like this:

_Will_: Why don't you just move in? It'll save you a lot of money.

_Lizzy_: That's true. And my place is awful, and I'm hardly ever in it. But I don't know if I'm ready.

_Will_: Why not?

_Lizzy_: I don't want to lose myself in your apartment.

_Will_: It's not _that _big.

_Lizzy_: You know what I mean. I don't want to lose my identity as a person.

_Will_: What could we do so you wouldn't feel lost? Do you want to redecorate or something?

_Lizzy_: You know I don't give a damn about the decor. I wouldn't change anything, and then I'd just feel like I was moving into your life and I would hate that. Plus, you own your place. Would you let me pay you rent? I don't want to feel like I owe you any more money than I already do.

_Will_: You don't owe me any money.

_Lizzy_: OK, OK, you're right. I just don't want to feel dependent on you. You know how important my independence is to me.

_Will_: Yes, I know. Would you rather move into a new place together? Would that make you feel better?

_Lizzy_: You can't give your place up. It's great and it means too much to you.

_Will_: Do you want me to move into your place?

_Lizzy_: Don't be silly. It's not big enough for two people, let alone all your suits and your huge TV and office equipment.

_Will_: Do you want to live together?

_Lizzy_: Yes. No. Maybe. This is ludicrous. I can't stand all this going back and forth between our places anymore.

_Will_: Then why don't you move into my place? It'll save you a lot of money.

Finally they fell asleep halfway through the nth iteration of the argument. His feet were dangling off the bottom of her bed, his face lit by the tattoo parlor sign across the street, the purple light flashing as it bounced in from the brick wall that closely faced the bedroom window.

The next morning she woke up with a kink in her neck a few minutes before the alarm went off. She looked over and saw that now half of Will's body, not just his feet, was hanging off the bed. That had to be uncomfortable. She saw his expensive suit hanging on the back of her crooked old door, and she knew they'd probably left something crucial back at his apartment. They didn't have to live like this. Anyway, the important thing was, they both wanted to be together, all the time. She didn't want to spend any more days or nights apart. She wanted him, and she knew he wanted her. She thought, What is your fucking problem, Bennet? Suck it up and move in with him. Throw caution to the wind.

She poked him. "Hey. Wake up, sweetie. I'm going to move in with you, OK?"

After a delay of about thirty seconds, he croaked, "What?"

"I'm going to move in with you. We'll work out the details."

After another lengthy wait, he mumbled, "OK."

"We'll talk about it later, after you're awake." She brushed his hair out of his eyes, kissed his unmoving lips, and bounced off to the kitchen to make some coffee.

And they did work out the details after some long, complicated negotiations in which they both staked out the things they needed to make it feel right.

At first she insisted that she should pay him an amount equal to her old apartment's rent every month. He refused on the grounds that it wouldn't be an equitable distribution of the financial burden, and he showed her a spreadsheet on his laptop to back up his point. When she saw his monthly income, she almost fell off her chair. And when she saw how much he paid for the apartment—over $10,000 a month in condo fees alone, to say nothing of property taxes and utilities!—she also realized that there were real limits to her ability to pitch in in any meaningful way.

He made a counter-proposal: they would each contribute a fixed percentage of their respective incomes to a household account to pay for shared expenses, food, and other joint purchases. She protested that this meant she would probably only be paying about 16 cents a month to live in this palace. But when he threatened to break out the spreadsheet again and run some more numbers for her, she laughingly backed down and conceded. Damn, hoist on her own "fairness and equality" petard!

In late June, the movers packed up all of her clothes and books and mementos, and she threw out all of her crappy law school furniture, even the yucky old green sofa. It held some fond memories for her from their early days together, but it was a piece of junk. He didn't like it and she didn't care either way, so out it went. She turned the desk space in the guest room into a full home office. She put her family photos on the wall and on the mantel next to his. And that was that.

And honestly, it wasn't so bad. In fact, it was pretty great. She didn't disappear. Neither did he. Instead, their possessions blended slowly together, and so did their lives, into something new and wonderful, something more than the sum of its parts. If anything, she felt she could be even more herself, knowing that Will loved her not in spite of who she was, but precisely because of who she was. And she felt the same about him.

* * *

Shortly after Lizzy moved in with Will, Georgie phoned for the first time in over six months. When she called, it was almost midnight, and Lizzy and Will were lying on the sofa in the entertainment room watching TV and thinking about heading to bed. Instead of getting up and leaving the room while he talked to Georgie as he had in the past, Will stayed right there next to Lizzy. As soon as she heard him say, "Hi, Georgie," Lizzy moved even closer, and took his hand as she listened to his side of the conversation.

"How are you doing, sweetheart? Uh-huh. Yeah, thanks, I'm doing well. No, not much to report." He looked at her and mouthed "Sorry, it's better this way." She nodded. She understood.

"Yeah, things are fine at the company. Where are you living now, Georgie?"

Georgie talked for a long time, explaining herself.

"Oh, I see. That's too bad." And a moment later, "I'm sorry to hear that."

"No, sweetheart, I can't. I'm sorry." Lizzy heard Georgie talking loud and fast. Will remained calm and controlled. "I know. I'm sorry, the answer is still no."

"We talked about that before. You know the conditions." Now Lizzy could hear Georgie complaining, then working up to yelling and swearing. It was awful. Awful.

"OK, Georgie. I understand what you're saying, and I'm sorry, but the answer is still no. I hope you're OK. I love you very much. I'm going to hang up now. Good bye."

After he'd hung up, Lizzy held him for a long time before he was ready to talk about it. She stroked his back, telling him he had done the right thing. She reassured him that he wasn't alone, that he'd never be alone.

Georgie was in Los Angeles, or so she'd said. She was crashing with some friends, and had already spent all of the quarterly allowance from her trust fund. She needed money for rent, food and clothes, she had said. But they all knew that wasn't true. He wasn't going to give her money until she agreed to go into rehab, that was the deal. But she wouldn't do it. He had stuck to the script that he had worked out with the counselors, and he would stick to it until she agreed.

He was so upset by the call that he was almost physically sick. Georgie had sounded worse than she ever had before. He was terrified that he would get a call in the middle of the night, like the one Lizzy had received about Lydia, saying that Georgie had OD'd, or that she was dead.

That night, he couldn't sleep. Lizzy stayed up with him, listening to stories about Georgie when she and Will were kids, and looking at photos of the family. He had gone off to boarding school when he was thirteen, so he and Georgie hadn't lived together much, only during vacations. But he still loved her, and talked with great sadness about watching her slip away, slowly, until the baby sister he'd adored so much was gone.

The next day he went to work in the morning. Then he went to a Nar-Anon meeting(1) at lunchtime and afterwards returned home to nap for a couple of hours. Lizzy didn't know what to do except to be with him. So she went home for the afternoon, too, reviewing documents and phoning her colleagues to sort out business well into the evening. By the next day, he was mostly back to normal, but the sadness lingered for a few days. After that, he made a point of attending weekly Nar-Anon meetings. Lizzy accompanied him when he invited her to, and he went on his own when that was what he wanted instead.

Georgie's illness was a problem that couldn't be solved easily, and in fact might never have a happy ending no matter how hard they tried. But, Lizzy thought, like the situation with Lydia, they would get through it together.

* * *

In early July, Lydia came to the city to shop for a bridesmaid dress with Jane and Lizzy. Jane had told her sisters that they could wear whatever bridesmaid dresses they wanted as long as they were jewel-toned. Together they found Lydia a very dark blue dress with enough Goth elements that she could be happy wearing it. Lizzy asked Jane to pick something out for her because that way Jane would get what she really wanted. Jane picked something green, and Lizzy imagined that it probably looked very nice. Mary said she'd find something on her own in Rochester.

Later that month, Charlie and Jane got married. About 300 guests attended. The bride and groom looked ecstatic, the church was beautiful, and the dinner, French country style at a nearby hotel, was fantastic. As they had at the engagement party, Louisa and Gil did their sheepdog routine to corral Caroline, while Uncle Ed and Aunt Maddie worked their magic on Lillian. Mary had canceled again at the last minute, complaining about the expense of her bridesmaid's dress. Or maybe it was that Jane hadn't properly accommodated her outrageous dietary demands, or that she'd had another fight with Tom. Nobody was really sure. This time, though, Lydia looked much better, sober and solid, and performed her bridesmaid duties without a hitch.

This party was also very different for Lizzy and Will. Now there was no pain, no longing, no misunderstanding. They were "out" as a couple, and it was great. Lydia came looking for them to tell them it was time to give their best man and maid of honor speeches, only to find them kissing behind a potted palm.

"God, get a room! What the hell is wrong with you straight people? Oh, my eyes! Have a little decorum, please!" she grumbled, amused, as they walked back to the ballroom.

Later, as the dancing was winding down and guests were starting to head out, Will and Lizzy sat at the otherwise empty head table with Lydia, deflecting Tom, Lillian and anyone else who might want to ask nosy questions of her. They talked about how the family could best support her when she went off to college in January. Jane and Charlie, Maddie and Ed, Lizzy and Will had already agreed that together they would make sure she could afford college, provided she stayed sober and drug-free. Lydia was on board with that. Her meds were working, she liked her therapist, and she was really excited about starting the program in graphic design.

"Speaking of cool design concepts..." said Will, pull something flat and shiny out of his breast pocket. "You've got to see this, Lydia. At work, we just dumped our BlackBerrys and got this great new device. Have you heard about this? It's called an iPhone. It's going to be big."

* * *

In October, Lizzy finally felt like she had the financial security she'd been working for. At last, she had paid off all of her school loans. She had saved up enough money that she had caught up on her retirement savings, after her twenties had been spent accumulating debt instead of packing away those crucial early funds that would compound over the years. She had her three months' salary saved for a rainy day. She had enough for a down payment on a small condo, should she ever need one. She was ready to quit her job at DeWitt.

On a Saturday night when they'd been planning to go to a movie but decided to stay in instead because it was rainy and cold, Lizzy and Will turned down the lights in the big white living room and sat together on the sofa. They watched the lights in the Park across the street.

She said, "So, I think it's finally time. I'm going to start looking for a new job."

He put his arms around her and said, "That's great, really great."

They had talked about this a lot over the months since they'd gotten back together, and talking with him had helped her think through exactly what kind of work she wanted to do. First, she had decided she wanted to try to get a job at an organization specializing in human rights work, something like Amnesty International. Second, she wanted to stay in New York, since he couldn't easily move anywhere else. That second point was an enormous one for her, because it was the first time she had even thought about compromising about anything career-related for someone else. She thought that it probably wouldn't be the last time.

They sat holding each other quietly for some time, realizing that this was big, and that their lives would change.

Suddenly he said, "You know, you didn't have to wait so long. You could have quit months ago. I would have helped you pay off your loans."

He had never brought this up quite so directly before. And a few months ago, she probably would have bitten his head off for even suggesting it. But now, she said, "Yes, I know. Thank you. It means a lot to me that you want to take care of me like that. You're such a manly man that way," she teased, feeling his bicep to prove her point.

"Thanks," he grinned, flexing a little. "But I knew this was really important to you."

"It was. I just wouldn't have felt right about it, like I would have been taking advantage of you somehow. You know, not even being married, no legal guarantees or anything."

He nodded his understanding. "Well...we've never really talked about it. What do you think about that, the institution of marriage?"

"You don't really want me to give you my whole spiel again about the history of heterosexual marriage and the inequality intrinsic in the way it passed women as property from man to man, right? Or about how unjust it is that our gay friends can't get married?"

"No, I think we've already covered that sufficiently." He smiled. That discussion a few months before had been a long, long night.

"Anyway, I think we can both agree that the institution of marriage has totally transformed in the last thirty or so years. Given the state of the American social safety net, and how much of our access to it is determined by our marital status, from a legal and financial perspective it's actually vitally important for women, especially women with children, to have that protection."

"So what do you think—from a legal and financial perspective, would you like to be married to me?" He tried to sound nonchalant, but his shaky hands gave him away.

She looked at him and smiled, taking his jittery hands into her warm, steady ones. "No. From the perspective of, I love you very much, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I would like to be married to you. I have the legal and financial stuff all covered."

He sat stunned briefly, apparently not having expected it to be quite this easy. Then the sweet, happy smile she loved bloomed slowly on his face. "Really? Is that also why you wanted to wait to leave DeWitt, why the financial independence was so important?"

She grinned back and nodded. "At least in part, I think. And believe me, we are going to have the absolutely most iron-clad prenup. There is no way you are ever going to get your grubby hands on my precious assets, baby," she laughed, because of course this was ridiculous. Her net worth was insignificant compared to his, and they both knew it.

"Don't be so sure of that," he said, leering, and reaching for her. She jumped up off the sofa and ran, shrieking, down the hall toward the bedroom, Will close behind.

Later, as they lay in each other's arms, Lizzy turned to Will with a serious look in her eyes. "There's something else I've been thinking about a lot, the last few months, something I want to say to you," she said.

"Uh-oh." Will sounded mildly worried.

"No, not uh-oh. After I read your letter, and all the stuff you said about work giving meaning to our lives, I realized...yes, the work is a big part of who I am. Maybe it has been the biggest part of who I am. But I don't want it to be _all _that I am. Not anymore."

"Me, too." He stroked the side of her face, smiling into her eyes. "I've never been so happy as I have been sharing my life with you the last few months."

She smiled, a little misty-eyed, back at him. "Me, too. Thank you for putting up with me and my crap and my obsession with equality and work. I know it hasn't been easy."

Firmly, he said, "It's not crap. I told you before that I don't ever want you to feel you've been erased. Ever."

She shook her head. "I don't feel erased. Quite the opposite." And she didn't. She felt like she'd been re-drawn, in bigger, bolder, blacker lines. Lines she liked even better than the old ones. "What about you? Are you feeling erased?"

He laughed. "Me? No. Stronger than ever. Clearer about what I want and who I am, and what's important to me."

Lizzy nodded. "Yes. That's how I feel, too."

After a moment, Will asked, "So, how do you feel about...kids?"

"As an abstract concept? As a group screaming in Target on a Saturday afternoon? I'm not that crazy about them." She threw him a teasing glance, since she knew what he was trying to ask.

"And as, um, specific, concrete, individual entities?" he evaded.

"As in, do I want to have children with you?"

He nodded.

"I think...that if it's something you would like, too, I would very much like to have a child with you. Eventually. What do you think?"

"Yeah. Maybe two or three. We could hire a whole army of nannies," he said hopefully, mostly joking.

She laughed. "Don't push your luck, Bucko." She thought about it for a while, quiet. "Seriously, that's going to be a tricky one. But I'd like to try. Sharing that with you would be...incredible."

"I agree. We'll work it out when the time comes." He smiled at her, and pulled her closer.

Eventually their breathing slowed, and, sleepily, she rolled over onto her side to spoon up against him.

"Hey, don't hog the covers, cover-hog," he muttered, his backside cold.

She snickered and pulled the blankets back over him, making sure he was warm and cozy. "Sorry. Is that better?"

"Mmmm. I love you," he whispered.

"I love you, too, baby," she whispered back.

She lay there quietly, listening to Will breathe as he drifted off, feeling his arm grow heavy across her belly, noticing his feet twitch a little as he shuffled off into Morpheus' embrace. Full of warmth, love, appreciation, and gratitude, she closed her eyes and followed.

* * *

The next week, Lizzy started her job search in earnest. She got in touch with law school friends and classmates, professors, and fellow SCOTUS clerks, to see if they knew of openings or had contacts in the organizations she was interested in. That's how these things were done in law.

On Tuesday evening over take-out dinner at home, Lizzy told Will about the headway she'd made. The dean of the Yale Law School had emailed her about a position at Human Rights International. This was a long-standing, respected human rights organization headquartered in New York, and the Dean herself was on its board. HRI had recently received a big grant from an eccentric philanthropist, Vaclav Novak, who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain and later made a huge fortune in the U.S. He was very active in liberal political causes and had decided to fund a new group at HRI specializing in litigation in the U.S. and U.K. focused on immigrant and refugee rights. HRI was looking to hire a senior staff attorney with expertise in the subject and an interest in doing policy work. Lizzy had had some pro bono cases in this area, and she was really excited about the prospect. Dean Goodwin would probably be able to get her a meeting with the right people because of her seat on the board.

She teased Will, "Now all I have to do is get an interview. Maybe I should go for broke and call Novak or the executive director, Ian Redfield, and say, 'Hey, dude, I want that job!' You don't happen to know either of them personally, do you? Are they Raven alumni?"

He thought about this for a moment, playing along, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "No, but I went to HBS with Novak's daughter, and I sometimes play squash with Redfield's son at the club. He's pretty good."

She laughed and said, "Oh, of course you did, and of course you do." She paused, looking at him more closely. "Wait, is that true?"

"Well...yes, actually."

She laughed again. "Oh, my God..." He really had no idea, she thought fondly.

"Seriously, if you want, I can probably make a call or two and get you an interview."

"Will, thank you very much. I appreciate it, really. But I think it's better if I do this through my own networks."

And she did. The Dean _did _get her the interview. Four weeks later, she'd given notice at DeWitt and was senior staff attorney in the litigation group at HRI. She felt really, really good about what she was doing, and she threw herself into it wholeheartedly, but in a good, healthy way. Her 50- to 60-hour workweek was so much better than the 80- to 100-hour weeks she'd put in at DeWitt that she felt like she was on vacation all the time. It gave her much more time to spend with Will. They took weekend trips and even the occasional adventure vacation. They went to the movies and sometimes the theater. They spent time with friends and family. She was able to start volunteering at the women's shelter again, and she speed-read through a novel a week.

She was deliriously happy. _They _were deliriously happy. Together. Balanced, in their own way.

* * *

_The New York Times_

_Weddings/Celebrations_

_July 6, 2008_

_Elizabeth Gardiner Bennet and William Prentiss Darcy IV were married Saturday at the Central Park Boathouse. United States Supreme Court Justice Esther Simkin Goldberg officiated. The bride, 30, and the bridegroom, 34, met through a mutual friend, Charles Bingley, who is married to Ms. Bennet's elder sister, Dr. Jane Bingley. Mr. Bingley and Dr. Bingley served as best man and matron of honor, respectively._

"_I thought he was a big jerk when we first met," said Ms. Bennet when asked about the couple's two-year courtship, "but eventually I realized he was the best of men." Mr. Darcy smiled but had no comment._

_The bride will keep her name. She is senior staff attorney in the immigrant and refugee rights litigation group at Human Rights International. She graduated summa cum laude from Columbia and received a law degree from Yale, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal. She later clerked for Justice Goldberg. _

_She is a daughter of Thomas and Lillian Bennet of Artemis, N.Y. The bride's father is a professor of English Literature at Artemis College. Her mother is a freelance documentary filmmaker. _

_The bridegroom is CEO of WPD Capital. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and also received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. _

_He is the son of the late William Prentiss Darcy III and Anne Fitzwilliam Darcy of Manhattan. The bridegroom's father was founder of WPD Capital. His mother was on the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was the founder of the Fitzwilliam-Darcy Trust._

_The couple will reside in Manhattan._

And they lived happily ever after. Until the baby. That changed everything.

**The End**

_A final A/N: Thanks for reading along. Please let me know if you enjoyed it, and thanks for all the kind comments and pointers many of you have left along the way. Yes, there is a sequel on the way.**  
**_

* * *

_Footnotes:_  
(1) Nar-Anon is a support group for family and friends of people with drug addictions. Based on the philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous (and, by extension, Narcotics Anonymous and Al-Anon), it holds meetings where people can anonymously tell their stories and seek help from others who are experiencing similar struggles.


End file.
